


Borrowed Time

by rosncrntz



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Adultery, F/M, Forbidden Love, Implied Sexual Content, Prostitution, Secret love, Slow Burn, Some angst, alternative history, limited time, so many relationships, unspoken feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2018-12-25 12:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 56,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12035604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: Victoria must cut off all ties with her oldest friend, her ally - her once love - Lord Melbourne. They have one final month. Things remain unsaid, feelings remain untouched. But, once they are living on borrowed time, the smallest things become pearls. Their feelings become more urgent. Their lives are drawn together.





	1. One Month

“It is time, Victoria, you end this so-called ‘attachment’ with him.”

At first, she laughed. Quite astonished, quite unabashedly, quite unbelieving of what she was hearing. She expected, if she laughed, they would begin to laugh with her, and the very idea would be carried away on the air with the sound of their chuckles. But she was met with earnest stares, and unmoving lips, and her own laugh dissolved almost as quickly as it had first sounded.

Uncle Leopold, first, so close to her that she could smell his acidic breath and see how his ascetic brow wrinkled before her eyes, then her husband, stood behind him, cold as a wall of stone, and just as adamant, then her mother, with her unbearable maternal gaze: faux-gentle, faux-loving, faux-motherly. They were aligned before her and she, powerless, felt the crumbling of her resolve.

They treated her ‘attachment’ as a ribbon bound around a parcel, trifling and pretty in its way, but destined to be cut off.

“There is no harm in it!” she cried, shaking her head, a vague smile plastered over her face, uncomfortable. “It is letters, that is all.”

“Drina, you have invited the Lord Melbourne to the palace more than once… and you have visited him, too!” The Duchess began, stumbling forward a few steps, holding out two despairing hands.

“And even if it were only letters. He was your Prime Minister. It is not appropriate,” Leopold added, blocking the Duchess’ advances, appealing with a wry grin to the Queen, as one appeals to a whining dog.

“He _was_ my Prime Minister, and is no longer!”

“But he is still a Whig,” was Leopold’s response. Damning. Agonising. Yet irrefutable. Victoria gave a sigh, half-laugh and half-lament, and turned her eye to her husband. Upright, stood in a collection of pale shadows behind Leopold’s shoulder, his expression was like a shrouded mirror. She pleaded to him without words. Now, surely, after everything, he would defend her – as he must know it would make her so happy if he would. Please, Albert – her eyes begged – you must understand.

“Leopold is right, Victoria. If anyone were to discover-“

“How would they? Private letters between Lord Melbourne and I are no concern of the country!” Her distress was getting the better of her now: painting her face with red, clouding her mind with heat, stressing her voice into shrill exclamations.

“You are Queen, Victoria. You must know that everything you do is a concern of the country.”

“I do not need you to lecture me about my position, Albert! Or any of you!”

“Victoria.” There is was again. There is always was. Just as soon as she felt confident, powerful, independent, or beautiful, there was someone there to strike her down with a condescending cry of ‘Victoria’ – to belittle her, as they did at Kensington. They would cut her down, as one does a flower, and put her prettily in a pot to fawn at as it slowly wilts and dies. They would box her in to make her small as can be, so they felt in control of the flame that moaned and writhed inside her. “You must be rational.”

“I am being perfectly rational.”

“Drina-“

“Mama! I wish you would not call me that!” Her mother retreated back into the darkness like a startled creature. Victoria could have felt guilty, were she another woman, a different daughter. A deep breath gave birth to a calmer tone, carefully controlled like the eye of a raging storm, “So you will force me to sever ties with my oldest friend?”

The Duchess desperately tried to placate her daughter,

“You will have Dash!”

“So, all my companions shall be dogs?” she replied, “That is your grand plan, is it? So, I can remain like warm wax, to be plied by your hands alone?”

“You would rather be influenced by your family,” Albert began, stepping forward into the light, which was pale enough to make him look icy, “than by a politician.” Victoria snapped back at him, her vexation taking form in venom, which seemed to spit from her tongue at her husband,

“Lord Melbourne wishes only the best for me.”

“That may be so, Victoria, but you must be seen to be impartial.”

“But – I –“ What was she to say? Any reply she gave now would sound foolish. She knew, in the logical faction of her aching mind, that she was being foolish. They were right – though it grieved her excessively. Any reply she gave now would be picked up by her prosecutors, and thrown back at her, only for her to stoop to the ground to collect the broken pieces. It would only make her feel stupid. What was she to say, when she knew she was the only soul on earth who would understand the desolation? “So I shall cut off all contact with him right this very moment?”

“No,” Leopold began. He was leaning down as if explaining the ways of the world to a child. If only she were taller. If only she could look down on him, “To cut off communications so suddenly would only cause suspicion. You must be tactful.”

“A month, I’d say.” The voice was her husband’s. She turned a teary gaze to him. How could he persecute her in this way? Hasn’t he a shred of mercy?

“And, in that month… what?”

Leopold replied,

“You treat him as you treat any other minister. He can come to the palace on occasion, but – as time goes on – these visits will become less and less frequent. You can write to him, but these – too – will become fewer. You say your goodbyes. And, in one month, he will be nothing more than a fond memory for you.”

How dare he pretend to know how fond his memory would be to her? He would roll her awful fate in sugar to try and make her swallow it. She was already gagging it up again. She could feel it in the base of her throat, a tightening, like she was choking, the taste of bile and phlegm.

“Can I tell him?” she choked. No. Remain strong. They cannot break you.

“It would be best of you did. He will have to know his duty.”

 _He already does!_ She could have screamed it at them. They thought themselves so clever, so high and mighty, so royal, that Lord Melbourne was leagues and leagues beneath them, and worth nothing!

How could they not understand all he was?

“I am sorry, Drina-“

“No, Mama. I do not ask for your apology. I would like very much to be left alone.” Not a single person stirred. Their quiet defiance struck Victoria at the core, and they only conceded after her cry of, “You may leave us.”

Leopold took the Duchess from the room. They were both silenced by the Queen’s anger, but quietly proud that they had beaten her. Albert remained. He was about to speak, but Victoria would not let him have the first word,

“I said I would like to be left alone.”

“Victoria, don’t-“

“That includes you, Albert,” she said. Albert hated hearing her use that voice. She did not sound like a wife, or a lover, or even a woman. It was the tuneless cadence of a monarch’s voice. And it was indisputable. He left her, with no other option.

And Victoria was left alone to write and re-write letters to Lord Melbourne. The first she wrote was scribbled in bubbling ink, screaming from the page in agony and riddled with curses against her family who had always tried to stifle her. But that draft was scrunched to a stone, and tossed into the enveloping flames. She watched as the words she had written turned to glowing embers, like tiny droplets of flaming rain, and she could imagine that the light she saw was the very spirit of her passion, rising into the air: red-hot. She tried to be less ardent in her second draft; she wrote pragmatically, orderly, monarchically. She wrote the facts, and only those, and informed him as she would inform a manservant or a chef. But she destroyed that letter in the fire, too. One was too heated, the other too cold. One was too personal, the other too distant. One was a heartbroken woman, the other an unfeeling Queen.

Finally, sat in morning light of the window and only now beginning to hear the soft pattering of the spring rain, she resolved to invite Lord Melbourne to the palace, to tell him in person.

_Dear Lord M,_

_I must ask you to come to the Palace at your earliest convenience. I have something very important to discuss with you. I hope you will be prompt, as I will be awaiting your arrival._

_Victoria R.I_

Lord Melbourne was asleep – a state he had so often found himself in when he felt he should be continuing his work on St. Chrysostom – and he was only awoken when his manservant entered with a silver platter and a letter.

“What is it? Can’t you see I’m working on my study!” he barked, pulling himself from the folds of his armchair into a position that appeared more waking than sleeping. His manservant, however, was not so easily fooled by the gentleman he had served for the better part of his adult life, and replied with more than a hint of sarcasm,

“Of course, sir. You are hard at work, I know.” If Lord Melbourne did not know the man so well, he would have him expelled for that. Or not. The effort may be too great. “But there is a message from the Queen.”

Lord Melbourne sighed. Hearing from her now always brought him pain. And, yet, he could not deny a tinge of something warm and invigorating caressing the tips of his fingers and the edges of his mind. After all this time, he still loved her, and that was as much grief as it was intoxicating. As exciting as it was awful.

“Leave it with me.”

The letter was placed on the table beside Lord Melbourne, who glanced at the handwriting. _Ah._ It was as familiar to him as his own hand, and twice as beautiful. His manservant left, closing the door behind him, and Melbourne turned to the pile of books that he had collected. Various volumes – leather-bound and yellowing – of Chrysostom, theology, Catholicism. Subjects that seemed so tedious to him now; that had once brought him such comfort, such life. He looked to his portfolio, what he had already written, and what he was yet to write. He knew it was all waffle – of course. He knew he should give up now. But he felt, whilst he still had Chrysostom, he had something of his youth, of his past. A totem of a happier time. Something he could still cling to, with cold fingers, that was far removed from matters of the Queen.

When he was working late at night, sometimes he could make himself forget. And those moments were often bliss.

But, today, it was evident he could not trick himself into forgetting – and so he progressed. He took a final look at the work he would never finish, and decided to leave it in favour of Queen Victoria. A jacket was fixed around his shoulders, creased just so, and his necktie was arranged precisely. His shoes had been shined, and he fixed his hair that had been ruffled from his nap. The Queen was ready to see him, and he must see her.

Arriving at the palace, Victoria greeted him with no less warmth but more urgency that he was used to. Her step was quicker, her gaze frantic, her arms stretched further to take his hands and, once she had grasped them, he noticed her palms were clammy. His palms, too, threatened to sweat – though not for the same reason, he thought. She gave him no time to kiss her hand but said, unprompted,

“I would very much like to have ridden with you this morning, Lord M.”

This was a strange introduction. But Lord Melbourne laughed sincerely, and replied,

“But the weather does not permit, I see.” There was now a steady rumble, thundering on the shutters and cobbles of London. “Perhaps when the skies are clearer, Ma’am,” he said, consoling her, though he knew – even if it were the clearest day in the very midsummer – he was not in good enough health for riding. Though, he would love to ride with her again. She had never looked more beautiful – he was sure – than when her face was painted with the healthy red glow of exercise, pink in her cheeks and huffing clouds forming before her face. Her hair would fall in strands from her bun, making her look refreshingly human. She had never quite smiled so. He would give anything to see it again. She smiled at his promise. Melbourne – however – had known the Queen for long enough to see a sadness behind her smile, like the condensation on a window, internally lit. “You said you had something urgent to talk of?” he prompted, growing wary.

“Yes.” Victoria’s throat was growing small again, tight, thin, and air was growing sparse. “I have been informed – no – I have been forced to consider… the… condition of our attachment, Lord Melbourne.”

 _Lord Melbourne._ He felt a pang of torment at hearing her use that name. It felt so formal – so wrong. Though, of course, it was right. They must not be so friendly.

“Our attachment, Ma’am?” he replied.

“Our letters, and visits,” Victoria replied. Melbourne continued the charade of misunderstanding, because it was less painful than telling her he understood.

“What of them?”

“Leopold, and Albert, think we are too friendly.”

“Well,” he chuckled, “they may be right, Ma’am.”

“I do not think so! I am sure we do not have a thing to be ashamed of,” she cried, pulling her hand away from Lord M’s grasp. She could not have been angry with him, but he could infuriate her, sometimes. She was sure through no conscious act on his part – and that only made it all the more infuriating. Pulling herself higher, raising her chin, she said, “They have given us a month, before we must end it.”

“Ah.”

There was a bitter taste in his mouth: the pain of losing her tinged with relief, that he could finally retire, retreat and regret. Weaved into it, at least, would be the fine white light of Brocket Hall, the threads of the muslin curtains, the rookery, and the orchid petals in the glasshouse. But a month? He would sooner go mad. He would sooner cut her out, sever the very veins of it, leave himself bleeding but at least get it done quickly. It would give him time to heal, at least. But prolong the inevitable for a whole month? His heart wept to consider their borrowed time.

“I will not be able to write to you, or hear from you,” she began, shaking her head, and staring intently at the carpet to keep herself from gazing at him. If she did, she would cry. “Everything I hear of your wellbeing will be through the mouths of others, in the form of idle gossip, and all you hear of me shall be through proclamations and newspapers! There will be no talking to one another anymore; not real talking. Not as it has been, when we have learned of one another, and made each other laugh. You will be barred from the palace like a criminal, and I from Brocket Hall. Our days are numbered. I can hardly bear it.”

“I know it is difficult to image, since I have been your advisor for so long, continuing without me, Ma’am, but we both know it could not go on forever.”

Her gaze flitted up, and there he was. Just as handsome now as he had been at Kensington. She was only eighteen then. She knew nothing of men or politics. And she had been so afraid. But he had been the one to lift the curtain, and all the world that he had unveiled was nothing compared to him. He had given her all the light in the world, though she hardly knew it. She sighed, and with her sigh she breathed the perfume of a broken heart: rose petals, charcoal, bitter fruit and parchment.

“But I did not think the end would come so soon.”

“Well… no, Ma’am, neither did I, but that is the nature of the crown.” So pragmatic.

“I suppose you’re right, Lord Melbourne.” A sharp intake of breath and a straightening of her spine was carefully conducted to give the impression of propriety. Logically, he was right. Emotionally, he could not have been more incorrect. A moment passed between them, until Victoria – overcome suddenly with emotion – cried out, “Oh Lord M! How can you be so unfeeling? Does this not upset you in the slightest?”

He could have given in, in that moment, the undisturbed moment to which no other soul but theirs was privy, and he could have told her how it hurt him bitterly to have to leave her, but he knew that – if he did – it would only make the pain more acute. His mouth trembled with unspoken words. He swallowed the words he would not dare speak, and replaced them with new ones, proper words,

“Well, yes, it is bittersweet, certainly, your Majesty. But I am sure you can carry on quite well without me.”

“And what will you do?”

“Return to Brocket, of course. The rooks are so active this time of year. You can see them building their nests when the weather is clear, and their cawing can be heard in every area of the gardens. And I have a book to finish. And a glasshouse to care for-“

“And you will be content in that?” she asked, suddenly. Her eyes were full of water, and her voice full of meaning that she could not have understood. Could she see right through him? How could she know; at once; at all?

“Yes, Ma’am.”

His voice was stiff. Unfeeling. Void of warmth. And she recognised it at once; at last. Sobs threatened to stifle her, and she turned her face over her shoulder to hide her crumbling. One. Two. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes, willing no tears to fall. Be brave. And so she was, like a bronze statue of a Queen, not a living, breathing woman, she pulled a sheen over her features and a coldness on to her skin. And it felt as heavy as metal. Turning back to him, she asked,

“But you will spend this last month with me, yes?”

William could feel his heart breaking already. To laugh with her. To talk with her. To hold her hand and kiss it. To study the flutter of her eyelashes and the rise and fall of her breath. And to have all this, and know every time it was coming closer to the last, it would kill him. But what a sublime death. What a joyful agony.

How could he possibly refuse her?

“Your Majesty, it would be an honour to spend one last month in your company.”

To that, she smiled. Though she felt she had no reason to smile, she had hope there may be beauty to come yet.


	2. Three Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three weeks until they are forced to part.

The sound of a pencil scratching yanked Lord Melbourne’s mind from his newspaper, and brought him cascading back into his seat, and back into the palace.

Turning his head, he saw the Queen’s eyes for the briefest second, before they were hurriedly and bashfully torn away from him. She turned red, and dropped her pencil too quickly to dispel suspicion. A moment passed when Victoria held her breath. Her eyes drilled holes into the page before her, and she moved her arm just so to block the view of it from her friend.

“Are you drawing me, Ma’am?” he asked with a smirk on his face. Victoria’s cheeks, already pink, sunk into a deep crimson. That was all the answer the man needed and, with some relish, he added, “I’m flattered, I must say!”

“I would like to have something to remember you by, Lord M,” she said, explaining herself in trembling voice, “All the other sketches I have are outdated, and clumsy.”

“Do you draw me often, then?”

Victoria blushed again. There was something overtly flirtatious in his tone, that made her hair stand on end. She was a married woman. She should not be this way. He should not.

“May I see it?” he asked.

“Oh, no!”

“Why not? I am sure it cannot offend me! I have seen your pictures of Dash, and Queen Elizabeth!”

“But you are not Dash! Nor Queen Elizabeth!”

Lord Melbourne returned gracefully to his newspaper. He did not treat her decision with bitterness, nor did he bother her further, but this method – gracious acceptance – was the most maddening.

“If you insist, Lord M, I can show you,” she said, begrudgingly.

“I do not insist, Ma’am. Do so on your own free will.”

“But do you _wish_ to see what I have drawn?”

“I wish for nothing.”

“Oh, _Lord M!_ You know what I mean!”

Lord M laughed, letting his newspaper fall into his lap, before he turned his body towards the Queen, held out his hand, and said most gently,

“Show me, then.”

Victoria collected the paper in her hands which, only now, she noticed were trembling slightly. She was unsure of why. Furthermore, it was only now that she began to notice all the little imperfections in her drawing. She had made his hair too curly – it looked like a bush. She had made his nose too long. His head seemed altogether too large. And she could never have captured the disarming green flicker of his eyes but – without it – it did not look at all like him. She was tempted, as she reached over to pass the paper to him – to grasp it back, tuck it away: lock it away, even. But she did not, and soon it was in his hands and beneath his gaze.

His eyes darted across the image and, slowly but surely, a twinge of a smile curled on the very edge of his lip, and that green flicker flashed into his eyes.

“You have captured me very well, Ma’am.”

“Have I?” Victoria cried, “Oh, I am so glad to hear you say that. You see, I thought I had made your nose too long, and your hair is not at all that curly in real life, and your jaw is not so weak, Lord M, trust me. And I could not get your eyes right!”

“Ma’am,” he laughed, “do not distress yourself. I like it very much.” That was true. He did like it very much. It did not, in all truth, capture him perfectly – or even well. He hoped his hair was a little tamer, and he hoped his nose was not quite so long. But the essence – the soul – of him was captured splendidly and, in its imperfections, it was made all the more endearing. “Will you give me some colour?”

“I believe I will.”

“Do you wish me to pose for the watercolours?”

Victoria laughed heartily at this when she spoke, so her giggles peppered her words, and her eyes crinkled and her teeth gleamed,

“I think I know the colour of your eyes very well from memory!” And then her laugh disappeared, and her expression fell, and her breast filled with air, as she realised the gravity of what she had spoken. Her cheeks felt hot, and her pulse quickened until she could feel the pounding of her heart beating against the bars of her ribcage. The noise it made was tremendous, and she was sure that he – too – could hear the throbbing of it.

The air between them was thick and hot.

Nothing Lord Melbourne could have replied would ease the tension that had now rippled between them. He could have told her that he also remembered the colour of her eyes. In fact, he could not dispel it from his memory. It was etched there, the very colour of them staining the book of his mind, seeping from page to page: a soft blue, not cold, but bright, like the very edge of a sunrise. He could have told her that those eyes haunted him. Returned to him in the night. Laughed at him in his weakness and cried to him when he was merry. He could have told her all that but what good would it do? He swallowed.

“It says here in the newspaper that Lord Glenelg is considering returning to India,” Lord Melbourne said, finally, saving Victoria from her embarrassment. She was so grateful that he broke the tension that was threatening to give her an awful headache and make her quite forget herself and – more importantly – her husband. “Wouldn’t that be a joy?” Victoria laughed again, and felt at her ease.

“You are wicked, Lord M! I have always found Lord Glenelg a very respectable, clever gentleman.”

“You have not argued with him. He and Normanby fought ferociously! I always thought Normanby would go mad, and either shoot the man, or shoot himself! Lady Maria Normanby would surely be glad of either option, however, and we must take faith in that.”

“Why?” Victoria cried, “She couldn’t possibly be glad of her husband’s death!”

“You would be surprised, Ma’am, at how women prefer their lovers to their husbands.”

At this, Victoria shrieked with laughter.

“You are always so candid with me, Lord M! It is these moments I feel I will miss the most,” she chimed, smiling broadly. Then, she said, “I will miss them terribly.” And she seemed sad all of sudden. Lord Melbourne placed his newspaper gently on the side table, and said, with the strength he could muster,

“Do not let yourself dwell on the fact time is limited, Ma’am, but let us enjoy the time we have.”

Victoria nodded. He was so controlled. He was so wise.

Lord Melbourne’s control was an illusion. His wisdom went against his heart.

“I will have a ball within the month,” she said, standing, walking to the chair where he sat, drawing his hand up from the armrest and taking it in her own. Her eyes were always so hopeful, gazing down at him. There was such optimism in her bones. She saw impossibilities as inevitable. “For old time’s sake.” Old times. How Lord Melbourne had relived ‘old times’! He wondered whether she, too, could feel the tugging of ‘old times’ on her soul in the night-time. Lord Melbourne stood up.

“Will your family agree to that?”

“It is not their choice, Lord M!” she cried, defiantly. She grinned, and it made Melbourne feel like sunshine itself. “And, besides, they gave us a month. If they believe I will not use the month to its very fullest, they have another thing coming.”

“Of course.”

“Are you to dine with me tonight, Lord M?” A sharp intake of breath was all he could muster before she pleaded, “Please say you will.” Lord Melbourne stifled a sigh, but replied,

“If you wish it, Ma’am, then I cannot refuse you.”

“I do wish it.”

“Then I must oblige.”

And, so, he did. The palace congregated for their dinner, and Prince Albert and King Leopold could not disguise their distaste at seeing Lord Melbourne among their number. Lord Melbourne could see it clearly; in the gazes they exchanged with one another; in the curls of their lips; in the tone of their conversation with him; in the whispers they shared with the Queen, and Lord Melbourne himself felt unwanted, unwelcome, like a parasite in the blood stream. They ate watching him and William, who once felt himself a strong part of the Buckingham Palace dinner table, now felt like a cat among the pigeons. Luckily, there was one friend close to him at the table, and this was Lady Emma Portman.

“It is good to see you here, William,” she said, blowing on her broth-filled silver spoon.

“You have heard of our numbered days, then, Emma?” he asked, lifting his glass of wine, and taking a long swig of it. He smiled when he spoke but the smile was far from genuine, and Emma could see how his eyes were blank.

“Of course,” Emma replied, “The Queen will be upset to see you go.” Emma’s voice was hushed, to prevent the table overhearing her. “As will you, I’m sure, to leave her.”

“It is time, Emma,” William replied, his voice hard. Emma was not made of so weak a stuff to cower to William’s falsehoods, so she continued,

“But that will make it no less hard.”

William did not reply to this. He could not. For a lump had formed in his throat so that, if he were to speak, his voice would crack, and give way to the torrent of emotion that he bottled up so proficiently, and stored deep, deep down so no one would ever know it was there.

Meanwhile, Victoria sat, at the head of the table, staring at her Lord M, becoming quite enraged. How dare he talk to Lady Emma? He could see Lady Emma every day for the rest of his life if he so wished it! But, Victoria, he would never see her again once these three weeks were up. She should have asked him to sit higher up the table. Oh! To watch them now, talking together so happily, so hushed, and to think how she was far, far away from them, starved of interesting conversation and the company of the man who would soon be lost to her!

“You are making the Queen fiendishly jealous, William,” Emma remarked, having seen the Queen’s red complexion, and how her lips pursed together into two white lines. William looked briefly up the table whilst he took another sip of wine, and he could also detect the green-eyed monster. He sighed and, turning away again, said,

“I do not think it is wise, simply because our time is now limited, to suddenly act without caution or propriety.” He felt quite at a loss of appetite. “To suddenly give way to feelings that are… inadvisable… would not only make our situation more painful, but would arouse suspicion that could only cut our days shorter, or bring disrepute to the Queen.”

“I hope you will not scorn her?”

“Of course, I won’t. I will be civil, and indulge her as far as is necessary. But I will not be rash, simply because soon I will lose time with which to be rash!” He had to remember to keep his voice low. It threatened to grow loud.

“You are very wise, William,” Lady Emma said, then she paused, before she resumed, “In matters of politics, that is.”

_But not in matters of the heart._ William understood that her meaning was this. But, to her, he would reply with: what do the matters of his heart amount to? Their very apex could not aspire to the importance of the crown.

The Queen pushed her chair out and rose to her feet. The table joined her.

“I would like to play a card game. Lord Alfred.” Lord Alfred was finishing a mouthful of beef when the Queen called upon him to react. Desperate to disguise his chewing, he raised his eyebrows and gave a small ‘hm?’ to show he was listening to his monarch. “Would you care to join me?” Lord Alfred swallowed and huffed before replying, calmly and urbanely,

“Of course, your Majesty.”

Lord Alfred followed Victoria into the adjacent room, where the card table was readily prepared for their games. There were candles lit, but the room was still dark, golden, vaguely masculine and heady with the air of drunkenness. Victoria stretched her hands over the felt of the table, and expected to raise her eyes to her dear Lord M, coming to sit with them to play, as he so often had done. But she did not see that at all. In fact, when she had finally sourced his face out, he was in conversation with Robert Peel! A Tory! And no friend of his!

“Lord Melbourne!” Victoria practically shouted, so loudly as to draw every eye in the room to her, and make every voice fall utterly silent, “Won’t you join us?”

Lord Melbourne had sobered enough to despair at this behaviour of the Queen’s but, to appease her, he smiled politely, and walked through the gang of disapproving faces, to sit with the Queen at the card table.

“Apologies, Ma’am. I did not know you wished to play with me tonight.”

“Of course, I wished to play with you tonight!” she replied, harshly. Lord Alfred cleared his throat.

“Should I acquire a fourth player, your Majesty?” Lord Alfred was casting an eye expectantly over to Edward Drummond, Peel’s secretary.

“No, Lord Alfred, that will not be necessary.” Alfred sat back down, disappointedly. Victoria, in an ideal world, would have had a card game between her and Lord Melbourne, solely. Alfred Paget was only there to erase suspicion.

They played their game – and Lord Alfred would later recall the entire situation being more than a little uncomfortable, as neither party would talk.

Lord Melbourne had allowed Victoria to win the second game when he was troubled suddenly by a cramping of his stomach which made him feel headlight. He hoped he did not look pale. He hoped Victoria could not see the slight trembling of the cards in his hand.

“I’m afraid, Ma’am, I must be getting home,” he said to the Queen once they had risen from the table and were meandering back to the rest of the party. He prayed his voice did not sound weak.

“I hope it is not because I have been rude to you!” she cried. She knew, now, having sobered herself, that her jealously had made her quite coarse with him.

“No, no,” he insisted, kindly, “I am just tired, that is all.”

“I hope you will come to the palace tomorrow.” Those hopeful eyes. What powers they had.

“I will do my very best, Ma’am.” He was not optimistic about the likelihood of that, but he would not dismiss her hopes. Victoria, without looking down from his eyes, reached a hand out and collected his two hands in hers and said, as warmly as she could,

“Goodnight, Lord M.”

Much affected, Lord Melbourne only just managed to say,

“Goodnight, Ma’am.”

And he left the room, and quitted the palace.

Victoria quitted the room.

Skerrett climbed the stairs to prepare the Queen’s bedchamber for the night, knowing that she could leave it until later in the evening, as the Queen would be wishing farewell to guests. However, when Skerrett opened the chamber door, she very quickly focussed her eyes on the diminutive figure of the Queen herself, and cried,

“Oh, your Majesty, I apologise. I did not think you would be here-“ Her voice trailed off.

Skerrett was sure that she could see the Queen _crying_.

“Ma’am?”

The Queen turned, quite wildly, and sobbed,

“Oh, Miss Skerrett, I am so desperately unhappy!”

Skerrett, at first, felt quite panicked at this situation – but she quickly pulled her resolve together and, closing the door behind her for the sake of privacy, approached the Queen, and asked,

“Have you not had a good day, your Majesty?”

“No! No! It has been wonderful. I have enjoyed Lord Melbourne’s company so much! And, yet, I am angry and… and jealous, oh, I have never felt quite so jealous, but I know it is simply because I want every last moment to be ours… and, to think of it all coming to an end… oh!” A few agonised sobs wracked her frame. “I feel as if I am waiting on the scaffold!”

Skerrett tried to keep up with the Queen, but felt dizzy doing so. Skerrett knew she must keep her voice calm and warm. The voice she had learned whilst talking to dying women.

“Are your feelings for Lord Melbourne so intense to warrant you comparing his relinquishment to death?”

“It sounds so silly, Miss Skerrett! But I feel that I will lose all my mirth. I love Albert, of course I do, but he does not make me laugh as Lord Melbourne does! I am never so easy with Albert as I am with Lord Melbourne. When I am with him, I feel that it is the only time when I can truly take my guard down. It is so tiring being a Queen or a wife all the time, that sometimes I just want to be a friend!”

The word ‘friend’ felt sour on Victoria’s lips.

“If you feel this way, Ma’am, I am sure your husband will understand-“

“Albert does not understand anything,” she wept, spitting Albert’s name out. With a laugh, she choked, “Unless it is followed with ‘engine’ or ‘system’!”

Skerrett felt she was treading a tightrope. On one hand, she was desperate to ease the Queen’s pain. Seeing her, breaking down, her body trembling, eyes red with tears, cheeks shining in the candlelight, was distressing. But, on the other hand, she must understand that this woman was her monarch – not her friend.

“I think, your Majesty, that if two people are truly dedicated to remaining with one another, they will, no matter the circumstance. Perhaps, Ma’am, if you told Lord Melbourne-“

“Oh, Lord Melbourne cannot know! He is so sensible, so dutiful! He would only think me silly.” She took a long breath and, sadly, almost wistfully, gazing out at the stars as one would in a poem, and seeing them as cold and distant entities, she said, “I know he does not feel for me the same way I feel for him.”

Not hesitating for even the length of a heartbeat, Skerrett replied,

“I think you would be surprised at how Lord Melbourne cares for you, Ma’am.”

Perhaps Skerrett was right. And, perhaps, when Victoria saw longing in his eyes across the room, and when she heard a lovelorn sigh escape his lungs, and when she felt his heart beating and breaking in the palm of his hand, she was not imagining it, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Publishing this before episode 3, as we may need some fanfic relief! This isn't exactly fluff, though. As always, thank you for your support, and keep letting me know your thoughts!!


	3. Two Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their final ride.

A bout of chilly sun had found its way through the rain, and there was a period of a few days which were graced with a bright sky and a cheerfulness that was breathed into the young Queen when she rose on a Monday morning. Easing herself from the bed sheets where she had slumbered with her husband, and skipping with bare feet to the window, she drew the curtains to reveal the warmth and the birdsong. London was so beautiful in the mornings. She was quite in love with the city. Albert, only now waking, rolled over, and groaned,

“You are lively this morning, Victoria.” Victoria’s laugh was as airy as the nightgown which ballooned when she threw herself on the end of the bed, crying,

“How would you feel about Windsor?”

“Windsor?”

“Windsor!” Her smile was wider than the space between the curtains, and more radiant than the light which streamed in through the gap.

“What about Windsor?” Albert asked, crushing his face into the pillow. He was still half-asleep and intolerant of the light from the world and from his wife. Victoria groaned, reaching out and yanking the duvet from her sluggish Prince. Waking a bear from hibernation would be less troublesome, it seemed. He yelped, throwing himself up. His dark curls lopped over his forehead as he rubbed his eyes.

“How would you like to go to Windsor today?” she insisted, leaning forward like an excited schoolgirl.

“Today?” Albert said, still groggy. At this, Victoria seized a pillow and unleashed it on the man’s face. It made a satisfying _poof_ upon meeting Albert’s cheek.

“Oh, do wake up, Albert!”

“We have not prepared for Windsor,” Albert cried, reeling from the force of the pillow, rubbing his cheek as if it were a punch she had landed. “You seem to have a penchant for impromptu visits to Windsor.”

“We can have it prepared now! I am sure, if I were to call Lehzen now, we could be off by ten o’clock!”

“Why Windsor?”

“Don’t you think Windsor is so pretty?” Victoria crooned, stuffing her hands into her lap and shrugging her shoulders in a parody of romanticism. The actions she had learnt as a little girl, in her window at Kensington, gazing up at some distant stars in the false dream of love coming to save her, or to free her.

“Yes,” Albert replied, pulling himself from the bed, “But on a Monday? With no notice?”

“It would be nice! I would like for Emma and Harriet to come with us. And Leopold and Mama, too.”

“And Lord Melbourne.”

Victoria’s breath caught in her throat, as if a door had been slammed shut at her mouth, and the words were left to gather in her lungs and fester or burn out. Choking out a reply, she stammered,

“Of-of course.” Albert nodded. He walked past her, towards his dressing table. Victoria stood, not daring to turn to face him. “We still have two weeks together, Albert.”

“I am not condemning you, Victoria.”

“But you are.”

“You can invite Lord Melbourne wherever you wish.”

“But-?” she asked. There was a ‘but’. She knew there was. Of course there was.

Albert sighed, stroking a long finger around his jaw, feeling for the scratch of stubble.

“But your actions may have consequences.”

“Consequences-?”

“They may arouse suspicion.”

Victoria’s gasp trembled out into an incensed laugh, which made her chest rise and fall rapidly, and made her shout,

“Every breath I take arouses some sort of suspicion, Albert! I am the Queen!”

Albert’s hands crashed down on to the dressing table. A thunderous clap burst through the room, knocking the air from Victoria’s lungs. A glass smashed: a thousand razor-sharp knives of blinding light exploded into the room. The walls were lacerated with them. Albert’s hands felt hot and numb from the force of it.

“You do not seem to understand how foolish you can be!” he roared, turning on her so rapidly that she instinctively drew herself away, caving into her own body like a startled fawn. A second passed when she thought he would strike her. Albert’s green-eyed fury seemed to frighten himself, and he thawed almost immediately, as the bitter frost does at the sight of the soft-hearted springtime. “Lord Melbourne is not a wise friend to have.” Both the sun and rain of spring existed in Victoria: the brilliance of the sunlight, but the violence of the downpour.

“I did not ask you to approve my friends.” Correcting herself, rising in stature, her grace became that of a Queen and her judgement that of a sovereign. To cross her now would be to defy God. And so, Albert stayed silent, and watched her mournfully as she fled the room. Listening to her feet down the hall, he knew she would go to Windsor with Lord Melbourne today, and he knew he would not be following her.

Lord Melbourne arrived in a carriage at half-past nine, and was rather bemused to find the figure of the Queen awaiting him outside the palace doors.

“It is too cold today, Ma’am, for you to be awaiting my arrival out here,” he said, mounting the stairs to kiss her hand. His touch was warm when she received it. His kiss was divinity. Today she realised it, quite suddenly, and quite troublingly: how that kiss made her heart flutter.

“It is not cold, Lord M!” Victoria laughed. Melbourne smiled at this, though this fact did bring shadows to his heart, for he was quite affected with the cold. “And, besides, I do not wait here to greet you, but instead to usher you!” Her voice was practically quivering with an excitement that, to Melbourne, seemed utterly groundless on a Monday morning.

“Usher me, Ma’am?” he teased, cocking an eyebrow like an incorrigible flirt that he fancied he may have been once. But he was much younger then. Victoria giggled in response to his flirtation – in the way a girl does when the affairs of love are only nested in forbidden books smuggled from libraries read in the early hours of the morning, when seduction is only played out in the curious mind before sleep takes hold, when marriage and wifehood is but a glimmer in the eye. When she giggled like that, she had never been married at all, and she was barely eighteen. When she giggled like that, she was in love for the first time again. When she giggled like that, she almost forgot to speak again.

“Yes,” she said, hurriedly, turning her head down to hide the giddiness of her expression, “I would like to go to Windsor.” Lord Melbourne raised his eyebrows. “With you.” His mouth gawped for a moment.

“Only me, Ma’am?”

“No!” she cried. Dismayed that he could even have suggested such an act of impropriety! Or, at least, she feigned such dismay. “No, I believe Emma shall go with us, and Harriet too. And Lord Alfred!” Lord Melbourne’s anguish came from the absence of a particular name, but he steeled himself to ask, unaffectedly,

“And your husband?”

Victoria paused and, before she even spoke, Lord Melbourne knew what she would utter.

“He will stay here.”

“Ma’am-“

“We have quarrelled, Lord Melbourne, that is all,” she explained, seizing his hands. The feeling of her two palms, softer than the velvet bow of her cape which brushed across the back of his hand as she moved, silenced him dumb. “Do not worry. I only want to see Windsor, together, one last time. Yes?” she seemed to plead to him. Her hands enveloping his were the hands folded in prayer, her eyes turned up to his face were watching God, the tremble of her voice was holy.

“Windsor is very beautiful, Ma’am,” he said, nodding. A smile rejoiced in his acquiescence, and her hands tightened into a squeeze.

Victoria took the first carriage with Harriet and Lord Alfred. William followed behind with Emma, and the two – after spending ten minutes in sombre silence – talked fondly of the views, the forests surrounding Windsor, the weather, and (of course) the Queen. All the while, Victoria soothed her still angry heart with thoughts of her dearest friend, Lord M. She would ride with him today. She was sure of it. The time was passed quickly and, swiftly upon their arrival at Windsor, Victoria donned her riding habit, and was back downstairs promptly to ask Melbourne to ride with her. In truth, she had come all this way distinctly to ride with him. Windsor was far better for riding. Far more private. Far more intimate.

A green riding habit swished in through the door. Green to match the coat he wore. Green to match his eyes.

In truth, Lord Melbourne did not feel entirely strong enough for riding. But he had hope that the brisk air and the roll of a horse’s hooves may restore some vigour to him, and so he accepted the Queen’s invitation and walked close beside her towards the stables where they were assured the horses had been prepared.

Two strong horses – a paler one, a little freckly, and a dark, larger horse with curves of tough muscles – stood awaiting them, saddled and prepared and obedient. No groom or stable boy awaited them. The stables were entire empty beside these two horses. Victoria stood to the side of the smaller horse (prepared with the side saddle) expectantly.

“Perhaps we should call for your groom, Ma’am,” Melbourne suggested. Victoria laughed at this trifle, slinging her arm over the back of the horse, prepared for his assistance.

“Oh, nonsense, you can be my help.”

Melbourne felt himself turning pink as his heart protested.

“Your Majesty, I do not think I am properly qualified-“

“You are a strong man, Lord M!” she cried before, quite without thinking, she said, “Surely you can assist a lady to mount!”

Lord Melbourne cleared his throat suddenly, clenching his fists to keep his hands from shaking. Victoria was unabashed, and held out her other hand. She began to lift her foot for him to take. Why shouldn’t Lord M help her mount her steed? He was a good friend, and had been for years. He was as well-equipped as any other man for the task. Her hand opened and closed, and Melbourne was forced to oblige her.

He knelt down, quivering on one knee, and he felt the harsh scratching of the wool against the back of his hand as he brushed her skirt. He gathered a few folds of the wool in his hands and, ever so gently, lifted. What seemed immovable was peeled up so easily, and an almost imperceptible wafting of air from the rustle of the skirt ghosted on his neck, which bobbed as he swallowed. His fingers stroked ever so gently and ever so briefly around her ankle. His mouth was dry as he wrapped his hands around her shoe. The curve of her foot nestled into his palm. Her hand came down on his shoulder. And _pressed_. Her body rose and he rose with her. Her chest, buttoned with gold, was suddenly before his eyes and for a moment he was consumed with the smell of her perfume: heady, floral, not overly sweet. As a gasp filled her chest with air, it swelled briefly, and a moment’s weakness made the flank of her sink into him. The chest of her jacket grazed the height of his cheekbone. He supported the curve of her body. He held it up. He almost faltered as he guided her body weight on to the saddle. His arms were weak; his knees were weaker.

And when his hands came away, his palms were sweating.

“How adept of you,” she remarked, adjusting her position on the horse, and taking the reins, “Lord M.”

As the leather straps slipped through her hands, she noticed her palms were sweating.

Lord Melbourne mounted his own horse, and Queen Victoria led the way out of the stables and into the open air. Windsor, Lord Melbourne thought to himself, was a far more preferable venue for a ride. The air was cleaner, clearer, filled with the smell of leaves after heavy rainfall, and the soil when it is dug up. A rich, earthy aroma: not pleasant, but not offensive. Unimaginably real. Singularly alive. There was no other smell quite paramount to it, other than – perhaps – the smell of the human body, or the Queen’s perfume.

The trees were thicker, too. Cantering into the forest was like leaving society behind. A few gallops were enough to be quite smothered in it. Dark needles like the warp and weft of fabric, knotted together into ever-moving carpets, overhead and beneath hoof, both catching the light, illuminating in a green-gold, and blocking the light to create black holes. Where the leaves could not weave themselves, the trunks of the trees made crowds. And the noise. There was no noise but the drum of hooves and the whisper of leaves brushing over each other. And, of course, their voices, filling the air between them with the sort of animated conversation they would both soon miss dearly.

“I often find the side saddle so vexing!” Victoria remarked, feeling liberated by the emptiness of the forest.

“Ma’am?”

“I can never ride as fast as a man could.” Melbourne chuckled. He did, indeed, feel stronger out in nature.

“You seem to do very well keeping up with me, Ma’am.”

“Yes, but I would like to thunder!” Victoria cried. Her dramatic tendency had always charmed him. To thunder? What a strange thing for a young woman to yearn for. “I would like to be able to keep up with a cavalry. To feel the world strip past me and fall back, back as fast as anything, in my wake.” Melbourne spoke next as a man to a woman, not to a Queen.

“There is no reason for you to ride side saddle here, Ma’am.”

“Lord M?” Victoria said, quite taken aback by this statement – such a forward way of talking emerging from a man she had always known as so careful.

“Well, you no longer have your,” he coughed, “virginity to protect, Ma’am. And we are quite alone. You could ride my horse, if you wish.” Would he really allow her to do this? She had not said it for that reason. She had never expected her absent-minded statement to manifest itself into reality. Stopping her horse with a quick tug of the reins, she stared inquisitively at her Lord, and he looked back at her with a simple and easy expression. Go ahead, he seemed to say, it would be my pleasure.

Lord Melbourne’s leg kicked over the head of the horse, and Victoria’s stomach briefly felt as heavy as lead. All other men Victoria had ever met career the leg over the backside of the horse; Lord M alone would indulge in the flourish of gliding his booted thigh over the mane of his steed. And the boots looked quite extraordinarily handsome on him.

Victoria’s thoughts were aflame. The fire frightened her.

He climbed down, and stood to the side of his Majesty’s horse. Her two hands descended to his shoulders – so broad – and she could scarce breathe as her corseted waist was gripped by him on both sides. A second of weightlessness as she was lifted into the air by him, and then the gentle glide back down to the earth as he lowered her. Watching her all the way. Agonisingly intense. His eyes seemed to expose all of her impropriety. Tracking her. All of the feelings she would deny, were as clear as the air shuddering through her nostrils and the crunch of her shoes on the ground. He helped her on to his own horse – a more difficult job, for the horse was taller. The contact between them was fleeting and painful. But once she was on the horse, Melbourne was intimidated by her form. So excellent she looked!

“It is much like riding side saddle, I would imagine, Ma’am. Except-“

Lord Melbourne had no time to finish his sentence before the Queen had begun to thunder. She stripped through the trees as fast as a bullet, and she was very quickly out of his site. Taking the reins of her smaller horse, he fondly stroked the nose of the freckly beast, hearing the faster horse’s hooves drumming in the distance, and waited with a smile for the Queen to return to him.

He loved her. God, he loved her.

A canter turning to a trot drew his attention away from the sweet, genial horse, and back to the Queen who was now very pink in the cheek from her ride. Her breath puffed before her face. Her frame heaved. And a great, bright crack of a smile illuminated her face.

“Oh! That is such fun!” she chimed. She clambered off the horse unaided, amusing herself in flicking her leg over the head of the horse. Lord Melbourne could have sworn seeing the supple outline of an ankle, perhaps a calf, for the smallest of moments, before the ruffle of her skirts fell like a curtain over the picture. “It can be so tedious being a woman.”

“Yes, the universe seems to have been set up to favour men, unfortunately.”

“Funny, I have never ridden a horse like that before!”

“How did you find it?”

“Liberating,” she breathed, stumbling towards her freckly horse, and taking the reins from Lord Melbourne. Suddenly, she became aware of how close she was to her friend, and how she could feel his breath, and how she could smell the smoke of a fireplace on his lapel. Her smile was caught away in the wind, and her expression dropped. “I feel so bound up all the time.” Perhaps it was the intoxicating effect of his gaze, or perhaps the dizziness from her ride, but the next thing she spoke, she said without thinking, “I think Albert would have me in reins, if he could.”

“I do not think that is true, Ma’am,” Melbourne breathed. She was so close to him, now. He could lift a finger, and let it run over the curve of her cheek as one follows the lines of illustrations as a child. He could brush a thumb over her eyelid until her eyelashes fluttered. He could paint her lips with his fingertips.

“He does not…” Victoria’s breath was short, and her chest hollow, “He does not treat me as you do, Lord M.”

“Quite right. He is your husband.”

“No,” she shushed, a hand rising like a leaf kicked by the wind before falling and _pressing_ on the centre of his chest, where his coat revealed the fabric of his shirt. White, delicate, and so thin that the press of her hand felt as intense as it would on bare skin. There was nothing between his heartbeat and her skin. She felt it. It was so _fast_. Why did it thunder so? “No. You are so much gentler than he is. You are so… so much… you are…” Her voice was air and unspoken promises. Her words were unuttered love sonnets. Prising her hand from his chest, he said,

“Ma’am, I think we should go back to Emma and Harriet. They will be wondering what is keeping us.” His voice was regretful, mournful even: agonised. It did not jump and sing as it so often did but, instead, it fell flat. He forced the words through his windpipe. He forced her hand from his. He denied what his heart ached for.

He knew. He knew if he had decided to kiss her, then, she would have allowed him. She would have returned it.

But he did not.

He could not have done it.

Victoria’s voice was tinged with guilt,

“Yes, I suppose you are right.”

They did not speak of the forest. They did not speak of the ride, though it was to be their last. Their last ride together, after so many before. It was bound to be agonising. And it was bound to be incredible. It was both. Yet they did not remember it entirely fondly. Some things are too intense, too blisteringly hypnotic, to be thought of as pleasant in hindsight. There was something far too brilliant about their stolen touches, their almost-kisses, their unspoken ardour, to make it fond.

“You and the Queen were gone for quite a while,” Emma remarked quietly, later that day, when they were gathered together to listen to music in the sitting room. William’s eyebrows arched, and he smirked,

“Yes. You know how the Queen enjoys her rides.”

“Yes, of course.” A pause. The music swooned. “You seem sad, William.” William would have laughed, scoffed, denied it. But Emma knew he was sad, and he was. He stifled a sigh in the swell of the music and, casting a melancholic eye over the Queen – so beautiful in her soft pink dress, smiling serenely at the musicians who graced her with songs worthy of an angel, her large blue eyes shining – he replied with words close to his heart,

“You know I am not wise in matters of the heart, Emma.” His voice was kept low. Emma’s eyes pricked with tears, to see her dearest William so conflicted.

“Is your heart quite engaged, William?” she asked.

“Quite irretrievably so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me a bit longer, after the most recent episode. Luckily, the character lives on forever in fanfiction! Thank you for reading, and let me know your thoughts on this chapter.


	4. One Week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seven days. Paintings arrive.

Though the previous night had been one of incessant rain, and that rain now silvered the rounds of tree-trunks and sugar-coated the edges of leaves, Queen Victoria was making her rounds in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. It was chilly enough to turn her breath to clouds, and to redden her cheeks and numb the tips of her fingers, but it was not so cold to dissuade her from her walk. And it was not so cold to entice her to hurry. Picking up the dew on the grass with the hem of her skirt – the red fabric deepening to a russet with the saturation – she ran her fingers across foliage just to watch the silver droplets scatter. They caught the light and made it sparkle, like diamonds on a chandelier, or on her crown. There was a fragrancy to the morning; or, at least, a perfumed air to spring mornings such as these. When the rain had finally eased its grip, and so the earth rebuilds itself, flourishing and drinking. She felt at ease with it.

It soothed what was tumultuous beneath the skin.

Six days and six nights was not long enough to heal the wounds of her marriage, or even to attempt the stitches. She had suffered tedium and heartache, made all the more painful by the slowly passing hours descending on her last moment with Lord M, all the more painful by the slow realisation of the extent of her feelings for him, all the more painful with the realisation that he was dearer to her than anyone. 

But the arrival of a dear and honest friend in Emma made her heart sing.

She hurried inside, and a kindly, pretty face greeted her. Lady Emma had been absent for a couple of days on a visit to Lady Palmerston, and so Victoria was keen to hear the news. Lady Palmerston, of course, was Lord Melbourne’s sister.

“Lady Emma! You have been dearly missed!” Victoria cried, strange, unwanted tears springing to her eyes. She took Lady Emma’s two hands and pressed them fondly. This reception clearly took Emma by surprise, but she coolly replied,

“I am flattered, Ma’am.” Then, noticing the puffy red cheeks of the Queen, and the whiteness of her hands, she crooned, “You have not been outside all morning, I hope.”

“No, not all morning. But I do like being outside at this time.”

“You will catch a chill, Ma’am,” Emma said. It was this maternal warmth that Victoria so valued in her dear Emma Portman. She wished her own Mama would show such care, such sweetness, such humour, and goodwill: but she did not. “You are not still quarrelling with the Prince?” Emma asked, a careful cadence to her voice. Victoria’s lips pursed, and her neck tensed. Emma pried no more – it seemed a dangerous topic.

Walking together to the sitting room, Victoria asked,

“You have seen Lady Palmerston, yes?” Her nonchalance was transparent. She was desperate to hear of her Lord M.

“Yes, Ma’am. I also visited Lord Melbourne, briefly.” Emma would, of course, indulge her.

“And, how is Lord Melbourne?” she inquired, eagerly, stopping and turning briskly around in the hallway. “It has been all of a week since I saw him last!” Victoria’s eyebrows creased and her voice trembled with her heightened emotion. Emma smiled; it had eased the older woman’s mind greatly to see William in improved health. She had been worried, but he was recovering his wits by the day. Emma had a theory, that she bound close to her heart and would not utter to another soul, that Melbourne’s health returned when he finally ceased denying to himself that he was in love with the Queen.

Oh, what things he had spoken in those few hours she had spent at Brocket! They were enough to break her heart, that he would never speak them to the woman who solicited them! _Oh, if she only knew!_ He had opened his heart and poured out the contents to the wrong woman’s ears. He could no longer deny it to himself, but he insisted on denying it to the world, and to her. If only, now, Emma could divulge the love and adoration that he had spoken. She would tell Victoria that, within the first minute of her acquaintance to him, Lord Melbourne thought her a woman of the most excellent humour, and the sweetest countenance, with all the beauty required to recommend her to the world. She would tell Victoria that he was enamoured with her in a second, and enjoyed not only her beauty but her conversation, which thrilled as well as fascinated him: her ease of wit, her simple nature, her love of fun. Her youth had breathed life into him, since that day at Kensington. And, since that time, she had not only proved herself an honest and amusing friend but, more importantly, she had become the closest and dearest companion of the older man’s heart.

Emma could have told her that Lord Melbourne was in love with her, but she only replied,

“Lord Melbourne is very well, Ma’am.” And, then, added, “You will see him soon, I suppose.”

“Yes. I plan to see him this afternoon.”

That was good, Emma thought. She was glad of it. The more time they could spend together before the end, the likelier it became that they could have some closure, some relief to their aching hearts.

Sitting down together in the pretty ornateness of the sitting room, Victoria remembered her propriety, and asked,

“How was Lady Palmerston?”

“Very well. Her and Lord Palmerston are very attentive hosts,” Emma explained, and Victoria found this very amusing. “Lady Palmerston gave me a gift, to give to you, your Majesty.”

“A gift for me?” Victoria replied, quite astonished. What had she done to deserve a gift from Lady Palmerston? And, more crucially, what could it possibly be? Lady Portman called on a manservant, who entered, and presented a large brown-papered parcel, and placed it delicately on the table before the Queen, who watched with wide eyes, and the excitement of a child on Christmas morning. The parcel was very flat, but large in area. Emma prompted her to open it and, so, with deft fingers, Victoria peeled back the paper, and revealed a portrait. Sitting neatly in a pretty frame, the painted features of a young man she had not seen before. “Who is it?” she laughed, before the laugh suddenly faltered with the recognition of a certain nose.

A young man with his face turned up to the light. His hair – slightly red – so soft it seemed one could reach out into the canvas and touch it. His expression so intelligent, romantic, with an obscure air of sadness to it, he seemed to be a man from a novel. A strong brow and lips that curved like the petals of some autumn rose that had unfurled from somewhere deep within him. He was outstandingly handsome; and he was her Lord M.

“Is it?” Victoria muttered, arrested by this snapshot of her love’s youth, “Is it?”

“Lord Melbourne, Ma’am.”

“Oh!” she cried, yet more tears springing to her eyes. She could see his soul in the eyes of the paint. If he were to breathe now, she could believe it. If he were to talk to her, or smile through the canvas – through all the years – it would delight, not frighten her. “How old is he?” she asked.

“Not yet thirty, Ma’am.”

Oh! The same age here as she is now. If they were born in the same minute, this is how he would appear to her. If only fate had worked as a serf for them. If only time had allowed them the luxury. But, of course, it was not age that separated them – but duty.

“Was he so handsome?” she gasped.

“Yes, Ma’am, he was,” Emma said, almost wistfully, before she laughed, “And some would argue he still is!”

“Oh, yes! Yes, of course he still is! But…” Victoria could barely talk for fear of crying. He was quite exquisite. And, yet, an awful fear seized her. A fear of her own feelings. This man – and the man he had become – were her heart’s husband. Though not in law, though ungodly, she could not deny it. “Did Lady Palmerston gift this to _me_?”

“She insisted you keep it.”

“Is she quite certain? It is such a beautiful work, I would hate to think-“

“She was most adamant, Ma’am.”

Victoria looked down at the portrait. Her heart fluttered. Gently, she prised the brown paper over the corners of the canvas, releasing the portrait, which she held up before her. Her hands embraced the edges of it, quivering, and she allowed a single finger (so tender as not to damage the picture) to glide across the surface of the work. Her stomach twisted, and a strange rapture coursed through her. She traced over his cheek, textured with brushstrokes that had been made when Lord M was still a young man, before she was born, before he had known her, before he was Prime Minister, before he was a husband, before he was barely even a man. The strokes she now touched were made when Lord Melbourne’s life was laid out before him, uncertain, yet promising.

Lord Melbourne – keeping to his word – arrived almost exactly as the clock struck one o’clock, quite unaware of the Queen’s heightened state of emotion, and the storm that raged within her at this very moment. To him, this was the first visit of their final week, and that gave him grief – but relief. Soon, he could ease himself away. Soon, he could allow himself to mourn. Soon, he could allow himself to heal. Soon, he could allow himself to forget about his soul’s last love. Soon, he would have peace amongst the tempest.

Being shown into the sitting room, he found himself already there, seated in a chair – propped in a chair, rather – and quite a different man to the one he saw in the mirror that hung on the north wall. At first, this shocked him dumb: his mouth gaped, his words stuck in his throat, and he left the Queen quite bereft of the pleasure of his hand to kiss and his words to listen to. Then, he became quite amused.

“I see I have been replaced before I have even left, Ma’am,” he laughed. That warm chuckle, that made apples of his cheeks and wrinkles around his eyes, that flashed the teeth she rarely saw, it was heaven. It made her giggle, as she rose from her seat. She teetered where she stood.

“Not at all, Lord M. A painting, however pretty, cannot ever surmount to the real thing,” she explained, her voice unusually thin, it seemed the breeze could tear it in two, “A canvas cannot make me laugh as you do!” _A canvas cannot make a fire in my heart as you do._

“I am glad of it, Ma’am.”

“Lady Emma brought this back from Broadlands!”

“Did she now?” he remarked, “I knew she had been to visit my sister, but I did not think she would return with all the wares!”

“Lady Palmerston gave it to Emma to give to me.”

“Ah! Yes, that is very like her. She is a little devil: Emily.”

“I thought you were close to her.”

“I am. If I were not, I would never put up with her.”

“Do you not want me to have it?” Victoria said, quite ashamed and very distressed, “Of course, if you wish to have the portrait, I cannot keep it from you! In fact, you must take it! It is of you, after all!”

“No,” Lord Melbourne replied. How he could silence her with a single word spoken so softly was a miracle and a mystery, “No, I would like very much for you to keep it, your Majesty. If you would take joy in it.”

“Yes,” Victoria breathed, “I would take great joy from it.” Her eyes were wide, unmoving, and filled with tears that Lord M could not ignore. He saw love in her eyes and, for the first time, he knew he was not imagining it. Almost overcome, he said,

“I suppose you wish I were still that man. Handsome. Young.”

“Not at all.”

His gaze met hers and they held it. Time seemed to cease. The world turned to ash and billowed away. Only green and blue. Woman and man. Simple and clean. A gaze shared that had been shared for centuries.

Though no words of love passed the air between their two souls, this look was enough. They both understood the language.

“Please,” Victoria said, finally, breaking the moment that threatened to shatter her, “sit.”

He did. He sat beside her, alone in this room. Victoria moved the portrait to accommodate him, and leaned it against the table, so it faced them. They looked at the portrait to keep from looking at each other – both fearful of what they might do if they continued to stare. They feared they would lose control of themselves. One week left. What a mockery of sense urgency could make.

“I wish I had known you then,” Victoria said. Melbourne half-grinned,

“I do not know whether you would have liked me!”

“Oh, what a silly thing to say! Of course, I would have liked you. You are my… my friend, Lord M, in whatever stage of life.”

“I was a very different man, Ma’am.”

“That does not matter! You may have been different but you were still Lord Melbourne.” She took a deep breath before daring to say, “You were still William Lamb.” Using his name felt sinful. But it felt enchanting. Almost breathlessly, she asked, “What were you like?”

“I spent a great deal of time reading. That was my only pleasure: knowledge, a library, a quiet time. I went to parties, of course, and socialised, and acted… regrettably.” Victoria laughed. “But I only really felt happy when I was reading. Or writing.”

“You wrote?”

“Poetry, yes.”

“Poetry?”

“I dabbled in poetry – or, what I thought poetry was. I was never good at it, of course. But, I suppose I wrote it more for myself than for an audience. I thought it was therapeutic. It eased me.”

“Did you have a lot of discontent to ease?”

Lord Melbourne could not reply to this. What would he say? His discontent as a young man, at the time, felt like agony. But, now, it was nothing. What agony could even come close to this? Losing the last person who mattered to him: first Caroline, then Augustus, now her. He choked on a sob. He was adept. Victoria hardly noticed it. She was left with a thought: did he cry? She could not be sure.

“I would have called you William, had I known you then,” Victoria added with a smile, easing the anguish that was painting his features, “And you’d call me Victoria, had you known me.”

“Victoria,” he said, half to himself, half to her. He said it suddenly. Without second thought or shame. It made her gasp, at first, before, with hardly a single moment’s hesitation, she replied,

“William.”

At this, William sobbed again. Though, this time, he could not hide it. Victoria’s chest ached and her whole body screamed to reach out to him.

“William?” she asked, watching him break down before her. Tears fell from his eyes, and he hurriedly wiped them away almost as soon as they had fallen. His shoulders shook, his body heaving. The noise he made was gentle and beautiful, but it hurt Victoria more than anything.

“Oh, this is torture, isn’t it?” he wept, “To be forced to part like this.” His voice was almost guttural as he cried, _“Flesh and blood cannot stand this!”_

She hated seeing him cry. She thought she would never have to see it. He was so composed. So sensible. So straight. So strong. Immovable. And, now, he cried before her. And she was the cause of it. It made her feel wretched.

“We still have a week!” she said, though the words seemed pathetic. What a trifle, to have one week. What did that matter? If at the end of it they would be prised apart? “We still have time,” she continued, “I will have a ball, tomorrow, yes? And you will come and we will dance! And I shall visit Brocket one more time before the end of the week. And we will still have all of our letters and, whenever we miss one another, we can read them! And reread them! And we will remember all the times we had. All the conversations, the times we rode together, the times we laughed, the times we danced and talked for hours and hours – they will still exist. No one can take our memories from us. Our past is ours.” Victoria, herself, began to weep, “And we will be together again.” She leaned close to Lord M. She took his hands and held them. “We will be together. In another life. I promise you.”

When those green eyes met her blue ones again, they were clouded with tears. Melbourne drew himself together, and stopped crying, and Victoria willed herself to be brave too. William felt exposed, trembling and vulnerable, at her mercy. He had never uncovered himself like that before. He had never let his guard fall so readily, so easily.

“You must have something to remember me by,” Victoria said, suddenly rising to her feet, conscious of the probability of someone walking into the room and interrupting their time together. She must hurry. Everything must hurry. Time was slipping through her fingers and being pulled from beneath her feet. She hurried to a drawer. She knew she kept it in here. She opened the drawer, and began to pilfer through it, knocking papers and paraphernalia out of the way carelessly. She had one goal. There it was. Her hand stole around it, and she seized it from the drawer. She threw herself down to Lord M again, and held out a small miniature in her hand. “Here.”

It was dainty. As she was. The tiniest frame, fitting perfectly in her petite palm, enclosing a perfectly crafted portrait of the Queen. This was no ordinary portrait. This was no common picture that anyone could pick up. This was a private thing, a token, something eternal and secret. The small, painted Victoria had her mouth slightly open, as if about to speak, but no words passed through her tiny pink lips. Her hair was dark, and braided, and her eyes – oh, her eyes – were brighter and clearer than the sky in the height of summer. They gazed upwards, out of the frame and into the light. She was exquisite. William was breathless and heartless.

“Doesn’t a miniature seem a little… intimate, Ma’am?” he whispered.

“Lord M,” Victoria beseeched, her words like a prayer, her voice low and deep, “how can you say that now?”

Victoria’s mouth opened, as it was in the miniature, but no words passed through her lips.

Only one week.

William brought the fingers of one hand to touch the cheek of the woman before him. The miniature could not create the softness of that skin. William swept a tear away with his thumb. The miniature could not create the dampness of her crying. William could smell the flowers on her neck. The miniature could not create the sweetness of roses and rainwater.

Seven days.

William leaned, and kissed her lips. The miniature had not such a kiss. His mouth parted hers. His taste was on her tongue. His breath was on her skin. His fingers trembled at her cheekbone. His mind was empty of all but her. Her mind was empty of all but him. Her moan was all he heard. His breathing was all that mattered. Her hand on his lapel. His hand on her back, around her waist. Their bodies, like a tide, giving and receiving. Numb fingertips. Tear-stained. Broken and building. Secret. Stolen. Brief. Everlasting.

An artist could never create perfection. This was perfection. This ecstasy. This _everything_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very emotional chapter - I did have a lot of fun writing this one. As ever, thank you for reading, and let me know your thoughts and feelings!


	5. Six Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ball is held.

“I kissed her.”

Emma Portman found herself stricken. A moment passed, wide-eyed, in which she was void of all voice until she forced herself to ask,

“When did you get the opportunity?” she stifled a laugh, half-excited, half-shocked, and all tempered with the scorched edge of bitterness that her love was lost to her. She was not one for jealousy – and counselled herself against it – but it would be folly to deny her humanity.

“We were left alone together,” he said, gravely, as if recalling some horrendous time – not a kiss, “Not long after I arrived, and we talked.”

“And then you did more than just talk,” Emma said, a sly, provocative smile on her face, and soft tears behind her eyes. William sighed, burying his face in his hands for a moment. He looked the picture of all that was dishevelled and hollow. His golden dressing gown had lost its shine and looked now as brilliant as tin. His face had lost its colour and his hair looked grey and his gaze dullened, but this did not upset Emma in the slightest. For she knew these were not the signs of a broken heart or a wilting body – these were the pangs of a lover in anguish. He looked broken, and yet there was a vague element to him that had never looked more fulfilled.

“I have cursed myself, Emma,” he said, pulling his face up and staring intently at the middle-distance where no face or friendly thing dwelt, “I cannot now leave her. I cannot.” He had to stop talking to gasp for enough air. A sob was rising. “To leave her now would be to die.” He had never spoken more truthfully. A politician is not one for speaking truths but, today, he was bound to honesty.

“You are in a predicament, William,” Emma sighed, her voice warbling like an autumn songbird, so warmly and kindly, “The matters of the heart are so often at odds with matters of the state. Well,” said Emma, rethinking, “not only that. The matters of the heart are so often at odds with the world. It seems unfair that we should fall in love with people we should never have fallen in love with. We seem to always yearn for what we can never have.”

“You speak eloquently on the subject, Emma.”

“I have loved, William,” she said, “In my time.” William felt his heart ache. He would be a fool not to see Emma’s affection for him – and he would return it in a heartbeat, of course, were he not engaged body and soul to another. Releasing a noise of anguish, a broken cry, swallowed in his throat, he fell back into his hands. Emma brushed her feelings beneath the carpet, “I do not mean to terrorise you.”

“You do not,” he assured, shaking his head, running a thumb across his brow thoughtfully, raising himself from his uncouth slouch into a more gentlemanly position. Brocket Hall had the terrible effect of making William far too _comfortable_. He almost forgot himself, closeted in those walls which had seen his boyhood, had watched him roll uneasily into manhood, fall in love, fall out again. Those walls had witnessed him cry. They had seen him smile endlessly. When one’s life is written in the very bricks of a place: it is difficult to keep one’s decency before guests. But Emma; she was no guest. Emma knew the very bones of him, just as Brocket did. He reclined into his armchair, sinking neatly into the folds that had learned the shape of him, and he sighed again, “You do not terrorise me, Emma. Far from it. You keep me sane.”

Emma smiled tearfully, and replied,

“You would be lost without me, William.” At this, he laughed, and so did she, and the laughter of two tired, but contented, souls filled the air, and the pale light of Brocket Hall grew stronger, and William was bathed in the light for a moment. His dressing gown flashed gold as his eyes flashed green. She had hardly ever seen him so handsome. Collecting her wits, she asked, “What will you do?”

“What can I do? I shall be at her beck and call for this last week, and then I shall retire from London. London is not healthy for a man of my age. No, it is far better to be in the countryside. The air is far cleaner. There are gentle occupations for me here. I will have the rooks for company.”

“Oh,” Emma laughed, sadly, “You and your rooks!”

“What?” William chuckled, “I enjoy their company. They are my allies.”

“Do you think yourself so bereft of allies in the human world, that you must seek them out in the corvid world?” Emma asked, earnestly.

“Perhaps not.” So modest. Was his modesty genuine, Emma found herself wondering. “But what allies I do have in this world will soon be moving on into a new age. And I must be left behind.”

“Oh, William!”

“I do not grieve for it.” He was utterly unconvincing. “That is how it should be.”

“Only a moment ago you said that leaving her would be to die,” Emma said. William was silenced by her words. What reply could he give? “And now you feign indifference, simply because you convince yourself that what is natural and human is insincere folly?” William could be silent no longer.

“Yes! Leaving her would be death! But I have no alternative. I have no choice in this matter. It is not up to me, Emma. I cannot choose to stay with her. I cannot choose to _love_ her. She is married, to a Prince, who has borne her heirs, the heirs of the throne of England. I am a man, a _subject_ , who will be forgotten soon enough. That is the natural order of things, as I see it,” he cried. He was still bathed in the light as a silence permeated. He said, then, quite softly, “That is the natural order.”

Emma was persistent. She needed to keep him sane,

“You sound, to me, like a religious man.”

“You know I am not.”

“A natural order? If there is a natural order to things, that is a theory to be tested with resistance.” Speaking so forcefully to her friend, she reflected on this advice, that she had never once herself followed. Of course, it is much easier to give advice than to take it.

William knew Emma was speaking dangerously, but she spoke danger with such wisdom. She made destruction seem enthralling.

Breaking the moment, Hunter came into the room, bearing the usual silver tray that signalled a message from the Queen: never from his sister, never from his friends, always from the Queen.

“A message from the Queen, my lord.”

Emma’s gaze as she turned from the manservant back to her friend was filled with a teasing delight, glittering with it, prompting a reaction from him. He gave Emma a look in return that made her laugh.

“Thank you, Hunter.” Melbourne held his hand out and took the letter from the silver platter. Not daring to look up at the smug look Emma surely had plastered on her face at this moment, William prised the red seal from the paper, his heart skipping at the ‘VA’ printed into the blooming flower of wax. He unfolded the paper, and read quickly. Emma watched his eyes dart over the paper.

“What is it?”

“A ball. She mentioned something about a ball.” He did not seem thrilled about this prospect. It struck him with grief as much as it did the joy of a party. It would be painful to see her again. But, of course, refusal would be foolish.

“She never mentioned it to me. She must have had the idea very suddenly. I wonder what pushed her to do it?” She was being playful. She could not help herself.

“I wonder.”

There was a sliver of a moon that night but, in its thinness, it was glowing brighter. Nestled in a bouquet of stars, the curve of it was pulsing a cold silver, singularly beautiful, and stark against the deep purple of the night. There were very few clouds, and what little wisps passed across the sky were fringed with white from the moonlight, so the billows and curls frosted. Victoria watched the edges of them passing across the sharp corners of a waxing moon, as Skerrett pushed a sharp pin into the back of her head.

“Ah!” Victoria cried, swerving away from the window.

“So sorry, Ma’am,” Skerrett blustered, pulling the pin loose, colouring a deep shade of crimson. Victoria ignored the sharp sting at the crown of her skull, and said quickly,

“No, no, it was an accident.” She turned back to the window and noted how the cloud had briefly swallowed the moon. “Do not be dissuaded. I want the flowers.” Victoria tightened her grip on the edge of the dressing table as Skerrett attempted for a second time to pin the gardenias into her braids. They slipped in easier this time, but weighed her hair down, weighed her head down. Skerrett took her hands away and Victoria examined the work in the mirror. She was illuminated by the silvery light of the moon, the edges of her face frosted like the locks of the night-time clouds, and she thought of how tired she looked. The flowers were prettily placed, and she had chosen a beautiful silken gown, pale in colour – like spun moonlight itself – and cut off the shoulder, to elongate her neck and reveal the curve of her shoulders. Every element of her should have combined to form an angel, but she did not see it in the looking glass. She wanted so much to look beautiful tonight. Saving Skerrett’s feelings, she said, with a smile, “Thank you.” And Skerrett left her, to breathe for a moment, before she would step out into the ballroom.

The room was like a nunnery. Chasm-like, cold with air that may have lain there for millennia. There was a remote rumble of her guests, but they were behind closed doors and walls, and seemed as distant from her now as the moon was. Smoothing the folds of her skirt, closing her hands around her waist to see how tightly the corset had been bound, struggling to breathe, she felt like a child in love for the first time, trying desperately to impress the object of her girlish desires.

But this was so much more profound. She could not liken her heart’s only wish to an immature silliness. She had cast William Lamb away before, but he had come running back to her. She could no longer avoid him. Only six days until they would be prised apart. How could she do it?

The Queen had invented some fantasy reason for this ball, some excuse, which evaporated into air the minute Lord Melbourne was spotted in the palace. Those who knew their time was limited, knew that this ball was in honour of their final week. Those who did not, assumed the ball was for him anyway. So close was their relationship. So scandalous for a married woman. Though nothing could be proven, tongued clicked with idle gossip, flicking fire. Lord Melbourne could feel the heat of it as he entered the ballroom, smartly-dressed, his green waistcoat complimenting his eyes which were just as handsome as they had been when he was a much younger man (the ladies smiled in remembering). Melbourne waited on the edges of the room for the Queen to enter.

Steeling herself, Victoria found her husband and, taking his arm, duty-bound, she entered the ballroom with him. The doors opened, a squeal of hinged announcing their arrival, and the congregation hushed to watch the royal couple enter – and William, most of all, was astounded by the figure he saw. Pale, the female form of moonlight, and as strong as ivory.

She had gardenias in her hair. Their flower.

Victoria saw him in the crowd. The remembrance of his lips. The smell of his skin. The touch of him, warm and human and real. The intensity of his embrace. Her tremble. The kiss returned to her like the flood: wreaking havoc, cleansing.

The Queen was forced into mingling. Royal duty. Irritating. Like a dressage pony or a prized cabbage. She had not called for this ball to meet the Lord of Nothing-shire, or the Earl of Dull-dom, or the Viscountess of Care-nots-worth. Whenever she could spare a glance, she would bestow it on the shadowed figure of her Lord Melbourne – her William. He would always be there. Behind everyone she met, a flicker of a cheekbone in the candlelight, or the broad shoulder, or the slow, familiar smile. Then came the dancing. But she danced not with him. She was sucked into a whirlwind with a man she had never met before. Something familiar belonged in his face, in the greyness of his hair, in the severity of his rhythm. He held her awkwardly as he danced. A lord of somewhere. She didn’t know where. She had been told but, whilst the information was bestowed upon her, she was indulging in a brief look at William. But now she was spinning far too much to focus on him. She had lost him. Her body was rigid as she was turned again and again and again. The dizziness made her headlight. Her shoulders aches and her ankles were too weak for her legs. A pounding on the inside of her skull and a sweat on the back of her neck. All this spinning. All these partners. Each one more inept than the last. A new man. Unfamiliar. Rigid. Ready to dance with the Queen of England. Circles. More spinning.

More struggling to find Lord M in the crowd. More wishing that she was dancing with him. He was always so gentle. So patient. So slow.

He would guide her dance as if they were making love. She knew what that was like. She was a wife now. But her wedding night could not have inspired in her the ecstasy of dancing with Lord Melbourne. Albert’s touch, the most tender touch that could possibly be shared between man and woman, was nothing compared to the yielding press of William’s hand on the small of her back as they danced. Her rapture was not found in the marriage bed, but in the meeting of palms in the centre of a ballroom, when Lord M was the anchor in the waltz.

To have that bliss now would be her only joy.

But the candles were melting, and the night was darkening, and the clock was striking an hour in what seemed a minute. Chime. And again. And again. Wax was spilling over the golden basins and dripping on to the ground. Drip. Drip. Drip. Victoria could hear it, as loud as thunder. Drip. Drip. Drip. The evening was coming to an end. She had danced with Albert. She had danced with Ernest. She had danced with countless men of little importance and even less merit, and her dearest Lord M – the reason for holding the ball in the first place – was utterly lost to her. She could not even see him now. She searched him out. There was still time. There was still time to dance.

One last dance. That was all she wished for.

They must have one last dance, before the end.

But time had grown short. She was being pulled from the dancefloor. She was being coaxed back into her prison. Her cell. She hadn’t time to say goodbye. She hadn’t time to dance. One last dance. That was all she wanted. But she was locked in the nunnery, again. And her dress was pulled from her. She stood in a dream. She was naked and shivering. The flowers were dragged from her hair and thrown away. Petals and all. Falling apart. She was smothered in the white folds of a nightgown. The material was paper-thin, petal-thin, translucent. She felt bare and vulnerable. If there was a breeze now, it could tear her.

The bed sat before her. The sheets were cold. Albert stayed in another part of the palace. Victoria looked out of the window. The carriages had all filed away.

Save one.

Lord Melbourne’s carriage remained.

He was still in the ballroom, blowing out candles. This was not his job, of course. And if anyone were to find him, it would seem damned impudence, but he did not care. The smell of smoke was heady. The hairline river rising upwards, pale, was beautiful. The darkness than crept around the edges of the room, seeping like ink into the centre, was comforting. Just to be in the palace for a little longer: that was enough. He knew he should leave. He was about to. But he just wanted to stay for a little longer.

He, too, felt disappointed not to have danced this night with the Queen. Not the Queen, no; he had never once danced with the Queen. When he danced, he was dancing only with a woman, only with Victoria. He had not danced with Victoria tonight and he knew that it may be their last chance. Never mind, he consoled his painful heart, he must remember the last time they danced. Though, at the time, they had not known it to be the last, it was pleasant enough, and it would suffice for the last.

But, to feel the breath trembling in her ribcage beneath his hand one last time, to guide her in the sweep of a waltz one last time, to hold her hand high one last time. Oh, how he wished.

She had looked so beautiful tonight.

“You are lingering, my lord.”

Lord Melbourne almost cried out in surprised, but stifled it, as he turned to see the Queen herself. A patter of feet as she was creeping into the ballroom, as light as air and more graceful than a breeze. Her white nightdress made a ripple at her feet like the crest of a wave and Lord Melbourne could practically hear the crease and brush of the linen. There was only enough light to make out her features, vague, but clearly serene. Alive with the thrill of mischief. Apples in her cheeks where love made her grin.

“And you are in your nightgown!” he laughed, his face colouring. He could see, through the thin material, the curve of her body. Healthy and soft. His heart thundered. Victoria giggled at this, and sunk into her shoulders, making herself small and light so as not to disturb those who may invade their privacy,

“Shh!” she laughed, “There is no one around! And, if anyone comes to quarrel, I shall tell them that I came to send you away.” Another patter of feet and she was close enough to him to light her face in the candles he had not yet extinguished. Golden. Ethereal. “It is highly inappropriate of you to be here, Lord M.” The name sounded strange, now. “I should be sending you away.”

“Is that not what you are doing?”

“Don’t be so naïve. Why should I ask you to leave?” she cocked her head to one side, bunching her dark hair which was loose from its bun so it could cascade freely over her shoulders, “When we have yet to dance? I could not let you leave before we danced!”

“There was no time, was there?”

“We will make time.”

There was no music. Victoria’s eyes insisted they did not need music, and her hands entwined around his, letting them open and then close around her fingers and her palms. William, emboldened by the dark and his own heart, lifted her arms into her perfect hold. He was an expert. An accomplished dancer. She wanted to dance only with him.

They were unafraid of being found. They were concerned only with each other, and the timbre of their breaths with timed the steps. On the intake, he swept her off her feet, and when the breath was let go and sighed in to the air, he turned her slowly. Her hair swept around her, and William noticed how the dark strands circled themselves into curls. Not halting the dance, but slowing, he remarked, breathlessly,

“I did not know your hair curled so.”

“It is so often tied up… hardly anyone knows,” she replied, feeling the tickle of the waves on her bare back, appearing from the muslin of her nightdress.

“It is beautiful, Victoria,” he said, without thought, “You look stunning when you are liberated.”

Liberated. What a strange word for it, Victoria thought. And, yet, so fitting. There was no better word for this. This rapture. This liberty. What they took in the darkness. What they shared in the candlelight. Spinning, not dizzying, her nightgown sweeping like any other gown. Her bare feet pattering on the marble like any other shoes. Her eyes were better than any jewels she could have worn. Her skin was more tender than the petals of any flower she could be adorned with. Without melody, their dance was given music by their heartbeats.

“You will come back to the palace tomorrow?” Victoria whispered, her voice light with hopefulness.

“Yes,” William replied, not missing a beat, “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. I will come back to you whenever you call, Victoria.”

“And I must come to Brocket.”

“Brocket Hall is your servant.” His voice had the cadence of ardour. “There, you are home.”

At this, Victoria could have wept, her eyes filled with tears, but she snivelled her reply,

“I am home, here, William.” She moved her hand from his shoulder and pressed it into the centre of his chest. His heart beat beneath his skin. “With you.”

All the air was sucked from her lungs when a swell of the unheard music sent her cascading into a twirl, and falling gently into his body. Only a layer of thin material between her body and his clothing. She had never been closer to him. The length of her body in contact with him. And he was unafraid of it, and so she was encouraged not to blush. There was no shame in it. There was no fear in it. His hand, pulling her close, could feel the warmness where sweat collected at the small of her back. He smiled: genuinely, beautifully.

They danced in the dark. They loved in golden light.

They did not kiss that night, they danced and parted, but the movement, the touches, the seemingly endless sharing of a gaze, was a rhapsody that threatened to break them. If this was to be their last dance, it could not have been more precious.

Like a pearl, they would bundle it up in closed hands, keep it close to their chest, and whisper sweetnesses into its hiding place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could not help putting in something a little bit Arcadia-inspired! Hope you enjoyed this chapter - and thank you for all your continued support and lovely, kind comments! You are all very wonderful.


	6. Five Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The evening.

William Lamb awoke early the next morning; not through any discomfort, not as a result of bad dreams or banging shutters, but simply from a subconscious desire to rise with the dawn. Tossing the blanket from his knees (he had fallen asleep on his armchair – he’d developed a habit for sleeping there), he stood up, stretched, yawned, and left the warmth of Brocket Hall for the cold morning air which, though dewy and misty, was clear and inviting.

And, so, he took to roving in the grounds, dissolving in fog as he walked further and further from the hall. First, a man; then, a shadow; then, a ghost; then, a creature of the grey rain. If Victoria were to see him now, her heart would flutter, for he looked the picture of the Byronic heroes she had read about as a younger woman. Coat billowing in a coarse wind, beating against the tough, weather-worn leather of his riding boots, hair flecked with grey and collecting beads of rainwater which were shaken off by the long strides of his gait. He was calling to his soul on the moors. Or, at least, that is how it would appear.

Braced by the weather, the springtime rain, and the haze, he surmounted the stone bridge that traversed the Broadwater. To the north of him was the red brick of Brocket, stark russet against the wash of cold blues, greys, and soft greens of whistling trees, stippled with specks of black that he could hear cawing bleakly. He closed his eyes, and their harsh cries were music to his ears. The drizzling rain cleaned his face. It woke him up. Opening his eyes again, he slipped his numbed fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat, and pulled out a miniature: the miniature she had gifted him.

He held it in the palm of his hand, watching as the glass set over the fine portrait became spotted with droplets, like crystals. Brushing his thumb over the glass, smearing the water over her features, he studied the intimacy of this picture. The Queen was unravelled – as she had been last night – her hair was tied, but ringlets fell free from the style, framing a face that was round and flushed and unaffected. Her dress showed her shoulders and her neck. This was a gift to a lover. He was a lover to her, now. Undoubtedly.

He closed his hand around the miniature, and brought the fist to his heart, and held it there as he squinted his gaze against the weather.

Victoria was in the soul of him; and he was warm.

William was in her heart; and she had risen with the morning just as he did, though neither knew it except for a vague affinity in their beings. She had stayed a captive within the palace, wanting nothing more than to rove as her heart was doing, in the park of Brocket. The window offered her only solace, for when she was able to let her gaze scour the labyrinthine streets of London, she felt she was moving far, far away, becoming lost in the heart of a city that frightened and thrilled her. The palace was but a shadow, the crown but the memory of weight, the sceptre but a stick and the orb but an orange, and her only claim to virtue was the words in her mouth and cloth of her character. In this fantasy, she was a woman as any other. In this fantasy, she could marry a man. In this fantasy, the man had dark hair, green eyes, and a good-humoured way of talking, and a kindness that would make her weep, and a handsomeness that young girls can only dream of.

Her nightdress still felt thin, and her skin still felt numb where he had held her. Her cheeks ached from stifled grins, and her throat was tight. Was that nervousness? Was it fear? Was that love? She could not know. Her feelings were spread out before her face-down, and she was an unaware observer of her own fate.

Oh, how she hoped for more beauty before the end of it all. She had no hope for a longer time. Five days was as decided at the sunrise which now she watched. She would enjoy them, however, though they were finite. She would hold on to them and keep them precious: for, now, she was sure she was loved.

She must see him soon. She must see her heart soon.

She invited him to stay in the evening, and he heeded her call to the very minute, arriving at five o’clock in the evening. Though, when he arrived, the Queen was not ready to see him, and he was told to wait in the sitting room. Footsteps in the hall, he took to be hers, but quickly he realised that there were too many footsteps for one woman (even if the Queen’s legs were shorter than most). Perhaps the Queen and one of her ladies? But the first woman who entered through the doorway was not Victoria at all, neither was the second, but still a merry sight to William’s eyes: Emma Portman and Harriet Sutherland. What a joy he could take in the familiar faces of two Whig ladies!

“William! The Queen is changing for the evening. Perhaps you will take a turn with us about the gardens? It has just stopped raining, I believe.”

He would entertain the ladies. The sitting room was hot; the fresh air would be a godsend.

The rain had eased, Emma was right, and the group walked in a line towards the lake, which they flanked for the perimeter, talking idly for a while, before Harriet said, mildly,

“The Queen will be glad to see you, William.” When he turned to the younger woman, her face was lit up by the orange sunset glow reflecting off the water, and it made her words seem dream-like, as if they weren’t already music to William’s ears.

“She seems quite in love.”

“Emma!” William scolded, wary of the company of Harriet Sutherland, less familiar to him than Emma.

“Oh, shush, William. One only needs eyes to observe how fond the Queen is of you. And how dissatisfied she is with her husband,” Emma explained, looking to Harriet for support.

“Do not fear,” Harriet began, “You have not caused a peep of scandal. And, in fact, I find the Queen quite amiable when she has been in your company, and quite ready to do her work. To an excellent standard.” Harriet’s tone became more sombre as she added, “There is only one thing that grieves me.”

William’s chest tensed. He knew it without asking, but asked nonetheless,

“What is that, Harriet?”

“That you are being forced to part.” There was the hum of a chuckle as William heard this, and he cast his eyes and head down to the ground, smiling sadly.

“Yes, well,” he said, “We cannot always have what we would like.” He spoke of losing his love like it was missing out on a slice of lemon tart: disappointing at first, but soon to be overshadowed by a wedge of sponge cake. He was deluding himself. It was easier that way. It would be easier for them both to enjoy what they had and then remember that forever. As she had said, there was always another world. Always another life.

“I am unsure whether her Majesty will share in your self-sacrificial nature, William,” Emma said, leading the way to a paved area beside the lake where she stopped, turned, and bid her companions stop too, beside the rippling water, with the climes of the night’s chill beginning to curl around the edges of the evening. “As I said, she is besotted.” William tutted, feigning disbelief, though he had tasted love on her lips and felt it on the tips of her fingers.

“All day she has been gripped with the strangest mood,” Harriet said, “One moment, she looks melancholy, and I fear she will weep, and then the next, I notice her smiling to herself, when no one has said a word, as if she is recalling something, a memory, a glimpse, and there is such a look in her eye… a look I have not seen in her for years. It was a look she had when I first met her, as an eighteen-year-old girl, fresh-faced, romantic, with her whole life before her, hopeful. She looks younger.” Harriet was suddenly quite overcome with emotion, and she swallowed tearfully before continuing, “If that is not love…” And then her voice turned to air. William, too, was left with a swollen heart from this speech, though he banned himself from tearfulness.

“You too, William,” Emma added, “Look younger than I have seen you in some time.”

“If I could keep her, for years and years to come, I would do so in heartbeat, of course I would,” he said, suddenly, his voice low lest they should be overheard by gossiping ferns or a babbling brook that would give him away. “But that cannot be.” He lightened his voice. “And that does not grieve me as much as it could do! I know now that I love her. I will not deny that to myself any longer. I also know that she loves me. And, though this world forbids us from ever acting upon the feelings we mutually understand, there is peace in knowing our preferences, and peace in enjoying these final days. And there are other lives.” William was not a superstitious man, nor a religious one, but he spoke wistfully, with full belief in his words, when he said, “We will find each other again.”

This speech touched, equally, Emma and Harriet. Harriet thought of her heart’s desire, and closeted her face in a shadow, where she hurriedly swiped across her cheeks where unwanted tears were collecting. William continued to walk, not feeling sad. He wanted to see his Queen and, as the darkness encroached on to the sky, he knew that it was getting closer to the time they would share. He stood for a moment in the garden, aware of Harriet and Emma in quiet conversation behind him, aware of the scrape of their footstep on the gravel, and he looked up to the windows of Buckingham Palace. There was little light left in the sky and so there was no reflection to hide what was kept within. His eyes passed from window to window, absent-mindedly, before settling on a female form. Victoria had been studying him from the window, her shaking breath making clouds before her face. She doted on his gait, his ease of manner, the shadows he cast on the ground, the shadows on his face, the golden light on his form, the fit of his jacket and his boot, the way he treated the ladies he walked with, the way he stood, the soft, slow smile that she found so enchanting.

And now he was gazing up at her, aware of how she watched him. And though metres and metres separated them, until they could hardly discern any particulars of each other’s features, they felt the other’s gaze so acutely that it burned.

“Do you deny, now, that she is besotted?” William turned swiftly, startled by the sudden questioning, having been lost in the heat of Victoria’s gaze. Emma stood behind him, casting a brief eye at the Queen in the window, who had become aware of herself, and was not pretending to look at the sky. Very soon, she turned and moved away from the window. William turned back, and felt bereft at the loss of her. Seeing she would not get a reply from the man, Emma said, “I believe she will be ready for us. Shall we go inside?”

William, Emma, and Harriet returned, and Victoria was waiting for them. She had worn her finest dress. And each of them had their breath taken away by the woman before them.

She wore orange: a colour she scarcely wore and yet a shade which became her so well. The fabric caught the light and flamed in golds and yellows, effervescent and flashing like the lips of a flame, a great fire which raged passion in her ribcage, and now took form in the colour of her gown. She had her hair coiled and tied, and in it she had placed orange blossoms. Her wedding flower.

“Lord M!” she cried, warmly, holding both her arms out and grasping his hands so he could not kneel to her, “How good it is to see you! It was so hectic at the ball yesterday!” Then a glint of something flirtatious made a spark in her eye, and she added in a low tone, “I always find there is no chance for intimacy.” William could still feel the brush of cotton on the inside of his wrist.

“What a shame that is, Ma’am,” he replied, knowingly. He flirted so little that, when he did, Victoria felt herself become giddy. But a stifled sigh was enough to soothe her nerves, and she let go of his hands, making idle conversation with her ladies. Oh, she was so unaware of how much they knew! She did so to placate their suspicions – but their suspicions were already piqued, and confirmed by William. But Emma and Harriet let Victoria believe that her affections were unknown to them – that would be easier for her, for them both.

Dinner was ready not long after, and they took seats around the round table, all quite merry – save Prince Albert, who was not entirely happy at seeing the presence of Lord Melbourne. Victoria had not told him he would be invited. He was not welcome, as far as the prince was concerned. Ernest, glittering with his Dukedom, was in very high spirits, however, and entertained the congregation with his tales and jokes – which made Victoria laugh excessively.

She had such a contagious laugh, William remarked to himself.

When the dinner was polished, the Queen and her ladies retired to compose themselves and the men remained around the table. Before a single cigar was lit, there was an odd air of tobacco and alcohol. Perhaps that was the aroma men gave off when they were left alone together: testosterone, competition. Lord Melbourne felt the Queen’s absence keenly. He was far gone.

“You are becoming a regular resident at the palace, Lord Melbourne!” The German accent was enough for Lord Melbourne to understand that this was Prince Albert and, when he had turned to see the young man’s face, it was uneasily confirmed to him. It struck him with a tinge of guilt – something rotten in his core – to see the face of the man he had helped to cuckold. No. Of course not. It was just a kiss. It would only ever just be a kiss. Melbourne shrugged, urbanely.

“Well, sir, when the _Queen_ calls on you, you obey her.”

“She is fond of calling on you, then.”

“Considering you have given a time limit to her friendships, I think it is natural that she should try to make the most of what makes her happy whilst she can,” Melbourne said. His words were brazen, disrespectful, but he said them so calmly that Albert could hardly work out whether or not to be offended.

“I had hoped for the visits to become less frequent. That was the intention, at least, to avoid suspicion. But, in fact, they have become more frequent.” There was a cold tone to his voice. “I wonder why that is.”

“That is a question you would have to address to the Queen, sir,” Melbourne replied simply, taking a sip from his glass, not making eye contact with the prince. “Talking of the Queen, I believe she wishes for us to retire to the sitting room. Would you excuse me?” Feeling flushed, hot, Melbourne escaped the awful gaze of the prince, and stumbled quickly to the sitting room, where he took a seat far from where Albert would sit, beside the Queen. He was happy with the position in the room, however, as he could see the Queen’s face quite clearly.

“Please, Victoria, delight us with a song!” Ernest said, sitting down at the piano, and awaiting his cousin to provide her womanly voice. Victoria looked bashfully about her, before her eyes settled on William, and she was emboldened. She stood, wafting, the sweet scent of the orange blossom, and she made her way to Ernest’s side, and watched in silence as the turned the pages. Each crinkle of a leaf felt deafening. Finally, he settled on ‘Lullaby’. A Storace song, well-known to the Queen, and admired by her for its gentle notes, and sweet tune. Ernest kindly adjusted the key of the music to fit the Queen’s pitch, and began with a swell of notes. Immediately, the give and take of the sea seemed to pulse through the room, wrapping the corners of the palace in a wash and wane.

Then she began to sing.

_Peaceful slumbering on the ocean,_  
_Sailors, fear no danger nigh._  
_The winds and waves in gentle motion,_  
_Soothe them with a lullaby,_  
_Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, lullaby,_  
_Soothe them with a lullaby._

William’s eyes were creating seas of their own, and the tears that threatened to spill from him would have made waves if he did not wipe them away. He had no idea of the beauty of Victoria’s singing voice. Before now, he had only heard her sing ditties, or in a group, or absent-mindedly whilst she worked. But to hear her accompanied by such a musician! And to hear her sing such a beautiful piece! Mozart could not compare. If she were exposed as a siren – set to lead him to ruin – he would have believed it. With such a voice!

And, lord, how beautiful she was. How perfect. How sensible in reason and endless in grace and fervour. Fire was no way to describe her. It did not credit her danger or her brilliance.

He needed her.

He needed her or, like a flame, deprived of oxygen, deprived of its life source, he would struggle and splutter and turn to smoke.

There was the hum of applause but, to William, the noise was muffled as if he were drowning. Half-dreaming, he suddenly regained some form of conscious thought, and he forced himself to join the clapping. When Victoria turned to see William, a pain in her throat from the singing, she was left breathless by his expression. He had never before looked at her in such a way. Initially, she noticed tears – and assumed she had affected him, and that gave her a glimmering warmth of pride but, then, she noticed a darkness to his gaze which caught her off guard. A wife’s part had taught her the depth of that gaze. Desire. Lust. Something adult and strange. Something that neither were in control of, nor ever would be. But that was no need for agitation, or danger. It was natural. And undeniable. And the result made Victoria’s knees weak, and Melbourne’s heart drum. She was not aware of it, but she was returning the gaze, with something just as longing, just as deep.

She must get out. She must. With him. She was seized with a desperation. A heat. To escape. To get out into the air. To breathe.

There was a rabble of talk. The congregation began to socialise. Ernest began to play again. Harriet accompanied him. Victoria approached William and, without speaking, he rose to meet her. They exchanged not a word. Everything had been spoken in dilated pupils and red cheeks. Victoria left first, slipping out when no one was looking. William followed quickly after. No one saw. He followed the swish of her skirts, of her layered petticoats, and the sound of them rustling, and towards the distant starlight and the low light of sleeping London. There was a drone of crickets and a silvery moon which bathed her as she fell into the light. Her skin was milky but shone like pearl.

She fled on to the balcony, and heaved with breath as she pressed herself into the balustrade, letting it dig into her corseted waist as she gasped for air, reeling over the stone. She felt entirely numb, so the bitter cold could not bite her no matter how hard it tried to pierce her. She twirled to face William and felt dizzy until his hands on her body steadied her and then, before she had sense enough to think, he was kissing her. This kiss was different. It was hungry, and her energy was devoured by it, but a new energy was breathed into her as a moaned trembled on his lips. The kiss was hard and fast and desperate. She was pulled into his body by strong hands. His heartbeat was on her chest. He pulled away. His mouth was open and his breath was hers. She took it and owned it and held it safe in the locket of her lungs.

“Victoria… Victoria,” he gasped. He was too overcome to speak of how he adored her. How his every thought dwelled on her. How his waking hours were hers, entirely.

Victoria took his face in her hands, urgently.

“My love,” she whispered, pulling his face down so it was close to hers. Their foreheads met, and she closed her eyes. He closed his. And, above the noise of the city, the piano in the palace, the whirr of the insects and the flapping of birds, they listened to the thundering of each other’s breath. “My love, my darling,” Victoria cried, kissing his cheek. Pecks, quick kisses, traced along his cheekbone and towards his hairline, when he bent down to allow her to kiss across his forehead. His eyes were closed and, taken by a boldness, she placed the softest kiss on his eyelid. Where the skin was thin. She had to stand on the tips of her toes to reach, and her legs shook. Her lips were warm, and his eyelashes fluttered at the contact. She pulled back, and a tear rolled from the eye she had kissed. She kissed it away. It tasted salty on her lips. William brought a thumb to the bottom lip which was now glistening from where his tear had been kissed, and he swept his thumb over it. He had never felt a passion quite paramount to this. He had loved before, perhaps. But never had his soul screamed so. Never had he been so in awe of his own feelings. Never had he so respected a woman. Never had he so _longed_.

He took her hand, and stroked along the length of her arm. It tickled. It made her feel frivolous. This intimacy of contact. This tickling sensation. Any chance to touch, they would take. Eyelids, fingertips, necks, hair, hands, backs. The small of her back, where it dipped into her small waist, fit his arm perfectly. The line of his shoulder, snug in his tailored jacket, felt heavenly as she ran her hand across it.

“I love you,” William muttered, lifting her arm, and placing his lips on the inside of her wrist, at her pulse point. She whimpered.

“I… I…” Victoria began, unsure how to dictate what her mind was yelling. How could she put a visceral feeling into words? How could she describe something so extremely real? “I want you.” She waited to see his reaction. She needed to know he understood. She needed to know that her own words weren’t foolish. He sighed, but the sigh was half a sob, and she knew she had spoken well. “I want you,” she repeated, boldly, passionately, consumed by a lust that she thought had deserted her, but more than that, this was not just lust, but love, life, everything, him. _William Lamb._ She rubbed desperate hands across his chest, searching him, scouring, over his shirt, round his back, “I want you.” She could have torn his shirt open. William's hands were shaking as they ghosted over her hair. Admiring her. Studying her with the intention to remember her forever and always. If he were ever to forget that face, he would never forgive himself. But even if he did, he would never forget all the many facets that made her so perfect. She was crystalline, gem-like, a precious stone too great for value. Her beauty was great but her significance greater. He could never forget her laugh, her humour, the jokes she made in innocence that were funnier than she knew. He would never forget the rides they took, how fast she would ride, outstripping him. He would never forget her dignity, her goodness, far more good than she would admit to. Her sense of justness. Her purity of thought which the world took for naivety but he understood to be virtue. She was a monarch unlike any in history. She would reform, rule, and create. She would inspire and move for centuries, as she had inspired and moved him. But she was much more than a monarch. She was a woman. Remarkable.

Oh, to forget her face would be grief indeed, but far less agonising than forgetting her soul.

Finally, William indulged her with a kiss below her ear, at the side of her neck. It silenced her. The downy hairs at the back of her neck brushed William and made him chuckle. It made her tremble. “ _Oh._ ” His kisses advanced down her neck, a moan still on his mouth, a noise like she had never heard from him, something real and natural and raw, something uncontrolled and unimaginably perfect, his kisses ceased only at her chest, where he forced himself away. Her perfume was on his tongue. Bitter-tasting, but fragrant with orange blossom and vanilla. He panted for air. His cheeks were flushed. She had never seen him so unbound. She had never seen him so much like a man: not a Prime Minister, not a Whig, nor a politician at all, not even a gentleman. But a man - with knots and emotions and desires and loves and scars and all the other parts of a human that made them worth starlight. To Victoria, William was spun starlight. To William, Victoria was composed of pinprick constellations.

His desire was her, of course. Not now, he said to himself. No matter how much he wished it. No matter how forcefully the fire burned. “William?” she said, breathless, bereft.

“Not here, Victoria,” he said, quietly. She felt herself coming back into her body. He was right. But that did not make her ashamed of her passion. She pulled him close to her once more, and poured herself into him with a kiss that tingled in her face and down her body. Her mind was empty of thoughts but raging with a storm like she had never felt before. A passion beneath the skin. An ardour beneath the crown.

Ernest had decided to take the air, only for a moment, but had been stopped by a sight which left him speechless. He watched, silently, but made sure to slip away before Victoria and William noticed he was there. Before they noticed he had seen it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sighs*... well, that was something! As always, I hope you enjoyed! They can't control themselves, these two.


	7. Four Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're on the water...

“I cannot remember the last time we did!” Victoria cried, scraping her knife along the crust of her toast to remove the excess cranberry jam, before relishing in taking a bite of her breakfast, wiping her mouth quickly with a finger as the red jelly came off on her lips.

“Well… I think it was last summer, Victoria,” Albert said, absent-mindedly, turning the page of the newspaper.

“Then we must today!” she said with considerable zeal. Albert did not have to wonder what had put her in such a jovial mood – it was clear that Lord Melbourne would be coming with them – again – and that was lifting her spirits. It was as if she had forgotten that their days were numbered. “The weather is perfect for it! And we needn’t travel far. There is a gorgeous lake for boating at Frogmore! We can take in the gardens! It would be such a shame to let the day go to waste, when the sun is so bright and cheerful! We can bring Vicky and Bertie! Ernest can come too, of course, and Emma and Harriet, and Lord Alfred and-“

“And Lord Melbourne.”

“Well, yes of course!” Victoria said without skipping a beat. Her voice had grown coldly insistent. “Why ever not?”

Albert placed his newspaper on the table, and pushed it away from him,

“I suppose, if that is your plan, Victoria, I had better inform the staff.”

Albert did as his sovereign bid. The staff were told. The carriages prepared. The coachmen were red-faced and nervy. They had not expected much work today. They were glad it was Frogmore and not York or Scotland! The Queen had such passing whims, that one could never count on her being reasonable. Emma and Harriet were informed, and a letter was send expressly to Lord Melbourne, inviting him to join the royal procession to Frogmore which, with a lightness to his step, and a gleam to the pocket watch he had polished in fancy, he joined amiably. Lord Alfred was more than happy to accompany the Queen to Frogmore – and was ever happier to see Sir Robert Peel and Drummond also on the guest list. The sun was indeed shining, quite brightly, and there was a fragrance in the opening of flowers and the trickling of water. Frogmore’s gardens had more flowers than most, and the lake and the fountains had radiant airs that made the spring feel like summertime.

Upon arrival, Victoria spilled from her carriage, bounding already, her cream-coloured gown whipping at her heels as one hand gripped her bonnet. She ran so freely it threatened to fall from her head. Vicky toddled after her and Victoria turned, bent down to smile at her child, held out two hands which clenched and unclenched, and crooned,

“Come here, my darling!” And then she scooped little Vicky up as soon as she was close enough, swooping her into the air with a cry of, “Wheeee!” as her daughter began to giggle. The two ladies, one only a girl and the other a woman, looked like a pair of gardenias, dressed up in their creams, the light behind them making haloes around their forms, misty gold and dappled. Albert followed soon after, and then Emma – dressed in a shade of dark green that blended her with the glossy leaves – with little Bertie in her arms, white like his mother and sister. Harriet followed in a flash of pink. Ernest followed her, making idle conversation. Harriet noticed he was troubled. Lord Alfred and Drummond walked along the path together, laughing considerably, and William followed them. He was quite happy being at the back of the party. He was happy as an observer.

He thought he must look very foolish. The whole gathering was dressed in whites and creams and pinks and greens, shades of scarlet and florally hues of yellow and pale blue, and then he was dressed in black, with his only facet of colour being the deep purple of his waistcoat, and the metallic chain of his pocket watch. He must look awfully dower, he thought. He did not feel so dower, today. If he had dressed to match his mood, he would be as white and joyous as his Queen.

Perhaps, a widower as he was, they would forgive him.

They were headed to the lake, to go boating, as Victoria had intended. Victoria had moved so quickly, that she had left all but her daughter (who was in her arms) and her husband (who had endeavoured to keep up with her) behind. There were two boats tethered to the small pier, and Victoria turned, with a smile on her face, and said,

“Take Vicky, won’t you, Albert? I would like to row out with Lord M! We have so much to discuss.” She was talking so quickly that Albert’s brain – though a fine brain it was – had trouble keeping up with her thoughts. She seemingly felt no shame in this. Albert saw shame and ruin in what she said.

“I do not think it is wise, Victoria, for you to go out onto the water unattended.”

“I will not be unattended, Albert!” she cried, smiling, passing the little girl to her father, “I will be with Lord Melbourne!” She began to turn to untether the little white rowing boat, when Albert took her arm.

“That is my point.”

Victoria breathed a laugh which faded as quickly as the bright sun’s beams being blocked by a cloud, and she pursed her lips, steeled her gaze, and replied, in a low voice,

“I am beginning to think you are jealous of Lord Melbourne!”

“I am your husband-“

“And he is my oldest friend!” Victoria replied, unrelentingly, “You may be my husband, Albert, but he has been a companion of my heart for longer than you have. And you cannot expect me to go gently into a world bereft of him.” She turned, and marched to the boat, with a head held so high she thought her neck would snap. Hot tears made wells of her eyes, but she willed them to be steady. Be still. Be strong. She had learned, as a young girl, how to give an illusion: she could give the illusion of strength, she could give the illusion of happiness, she could give the illusion of not being in love, and to be in love with another.

She knelt and took the ropes in her hands. There was a knot. The ropes were wet and slippery, and covered with some ugly green muck that made her feel ill and came off on her hands when she tore them away. Be steady. Be still. Be strong. She took the ropes again in her hands and began to tug at them, but the more she tugged the tighter they seemed to become, and the harder they seemed to scratch at her fingers, and the more and more frustrated she became, and the further she was forced to reach over the water, and the more unclean her hands became, and the more ruffled her hair and red her cheeks.

“May I assist you, Ma’am?”

That familiar voice, then a hand, tough with age but gentle through the nature of his working life – not physical labour but a mental challenge, manifesting itself in late nights bathing in ink and the written word. She leant back, and watched in silence as he untied the knots that had grieved her only a moment ago. She felt a jarring sense of wounded pride, but beneath it ran an excited current, that he had provided her with help, unasked. Once he had loosed the ropes, Victoria said,

“I have decided that we will row out together, Lord M.”

“Do you think it is wise for us to be out on a boat alone?” William asked, hesitating before stepping into the vessel ahead of the Queen.

“Oh, William!” she cried, ignoring his outstretched hand, and climbing into the boat without the need of his aid, “Please do shut up. You are beginning to sound infuriatingly like my husband!” William chuckled at this, red-faced, oddly thrilled at this telling-off he had received. Looking back briefly to see the aghast face of her husband, and the humoured faces of Emma and Harriet, Victoria kicked the boat off, and took her seat in the boat, putting her parasol up to protect her skin from the sun’s rays. William watched fondly as the sun pierced through the gaps in the lace, and dotted across her skin like dappling light through the trees on to the leaf-strewn ground. She was a marvel, truly.

As they drifted further from the civilisation that would persecute them, and floated further into the waters which were calm and beautiful and accepting – immensely private, William took the oars and prepared himself to row them out on to the lake.

“Perhaps, William, you could row more effectively were you to take your jacket off. I am sure the sleeves will restrict your movements,” Victoria said before he could even delve the wooden paddles into the lake. There was something wryly enchanting in her voice, in the lilt of it, that struck William as intensely cheeky.

“Do you think so?” William teased, “Well, if you insist, Ma’am.” He pulled the oars back into the boat, and wriggled himself free of his dark, woollen jacket (which was boiling him anyway) and Victoria’s heart weakened as she saw the white sleeves of his shirt, which he promptly rolled to his elbows, revealing his forearms. They looked strong, she thought. His waistcoat – purple – brought out the green in his eyes, and his pocket watch was looking particularly glittering. He took the oars again, and began to row. The way his body moved, forwards and backwards as it beat against the current, and how his arms tensed, letting veins rise to view: the whole affair was practically mesmerising for Victoria, who watched, biting her bottom lip.

The trickle of the water as the oars rose out was like the twinkling of a silver bell, perfect, clear, irrefutable. And the hollow glug of the water as the oars delved and swooped through the depths lulled Victoria into a calm which made her eyes droop and her breath sigh. She could have fallen asleep, once they were far enough out that the only noise became the water, the chirrup of birds and bumblebees, and William’s breath.

Opening her eyes, squinting at the sun, Victoria turned back to see that her family and friends were now out of view. She could not be sure whether they had travelled out in a boat of their own but, whatever case, she could not see them now. Emboldened by this perceived aloneness, despite the broad daylight, and the lack of cover considering they were in the centre of the lake, Victoria turned to her friend and said, brazenly,

“Kiss me.”

William almost dropped an oar,

“Victoria!” he shushed, unable to keep himself from chuckling. She seemed hurt,

“Whatever is the matter?”

“I do not think it is the time, nor the place!” Victoria scoffed. “We do not want your husband to suspect anything.”

“Oh, damn him!”

“Victoria.”

“No, why should I not damn him? When he has _damned me?_ ” she cried, throwing her parasol into the boat with a cry of frustration, “He believes he can control me entirely. He can control what I do, who I talk to, the things and people I enjoy most in the world! What right has he to do such things?”

William spoke quietly, softly, but with a torrent of emotion beneath the skin that threatened to break him,

“Your Majesty, I know it is hard, but the… the relationship… the attachment… between yourself and I is unconstitutional. Whether we like it or not, it is understandable that it troubles the Prince. Though it grieves me… more than I can say… more than you can understand… Victoria… after four days’ time, when we part, we will be free of this suspicion.”

“How can it be unconstitutional? There is nothing unconstitutional about how I feel! The constitution does not even come into it!”

“Ma’am,” William said, gently, “I know you understand your duty. You do not need for me to explain this to you.” He was right. She hated how he was right.

“Oh, I will miss you. Is there nothing we can do? I have so much more…” Victoria hardly knew what to say to him. How could she tell him she needed him? How could she tell him she wanted him more than anything? “I have so much more I want to do. I have so much I need to say. I wish we could fight. Fight against it. Stop it all. Must this be goodbye?”

“I believe it must,” he said. Of course, he knew what she wanted of him. And he knew he would gladly give it her, if circumstances were not as they were. Oh, how he wished for it.

“I have been so happy. These past few days has been the most glorious times of my life, but then I think of them coming to an end, and I am so desperately unhappy.”

“Perhaps, the time needed to be finite for the moments to become precious.”

“It is not a price worth paying.”

“Perhaps not. But I believe I shall take great comfort from this last month. To leave you one month ago, I would have mourned for far longer. But, strangely, now, knowing of your affection, I can take joy in knowing that we finally understand one another.”

“And you will take comfort in the next life?”

“In the next life, Victoria. Always.”

“You are so brave, William,” Victoria said, staring into the water, unable to look at him who her heart wept for, “How can you be so brave?”

“It is not bravery,” he said, pensively, that familiar tone of self-deprecation returning to his voice. “Anyone can buckle at the slightest whiff of scandal, I have done that my entire life – that is cowardice. But to fight back, to try… to try to keep something of your own, as you do. That is bravery, indeed.”

“Then be brave!” Victoria said, latching on to a sudden flash of hope, desperately, with white knuckles and the tips of her nails, “Fight back. We will fight back together.”

“This world is gentler to cowards.”

“I do not want gentle!”

“You are the Queen. You must have gentle. The country must have gentle.”

“What if we...?” she began, before her voice faded away at the sight of his gaze, insistent, decided. His eyes were in pain, but the strength of his brow and mouth showed her that he was not for turning. She was about to ask for secrets. What if they were to carry on in secret? Go further, in secret? Then the country need be none the wiser! But she knew he would warn her of the danger of being found out. The risk was not worth taking. Victoria felt her throat clench with the tears that rose in her chest, but she smiled, to suppress them, and said, with a lighter tone to her voice, “We will not let it ruin the day! The sun is so bright! There is no room for melancholy here!”

Something in her voice: she was unconvincing. William forced the corners of his mouth to turn, nonetheless, and replied, contentedly,

“Yes. The weather is fine.”

Though, almost as quickly as he had spoken, the weather turned. It was first signalled in a darkness that spread itself over the sun. William and Victoria, rowing further out into the lake, and talking idly, could barely notice this change when it first took place, however. But then a distant rumble made Victoria’s ears prick up,

“What was that?”

William could not be sure – and told her not to worry herself. That was until they heard a crack, then a roar, and then the sky’s floodgates blew open, and the rain poured. There was no increase of rain; one moment, it was clear, the next, there was a curtain of it, grey and pounding.

“Oh!” Victoria cried, bunching her shoulders into her neck as if that would protect her from the lashing rain that was making thunder on the water all around them, “William! Quick!” William rowed as fast as he could, chuckling to himself as the cold rainwater saturated his shirt, making it stick to his arms, and ran down the back of his neck and down his back. Victoria began to giggle too, her dress drinking the rain and darkening with the flood. Her hair clamped to her scalp, dark and clumpy, and the drops of rain collected on the tip of her nose, drip-dripping from it and on to her clasped hands – which were now trembling from the cold. She turned two creased brows, and two pretty eyes, to look at him, and noticed how the silhouette of his arms were pronounced in the sopping material, how the curls of his hair were plastered to his forehead, flashing in silvery grey now they were wet, and she felt a twinge deep in her stomach to see how he panted with the exercise. Though wet and breathless, Victoria felt inappropriately composed, sat before her saturated, heaving friend, and so she tugged at the slippery ribbons of her bonnet, and tore it from her head, exposing all of her hair to the elements. It became lank very quickly, and she felt liberated.

She opened up, as flowers do to the rain which feeds them, and suddenly the downpour no longer seemed to surprise her, to bring discomfort to her, but – as a flower – she was at one with it. The smile on her face dropped, but not into a frown: into a look of a breathless chest, a beating heart, a skin waiting to be touched, a kiss as yet to occur. William saw this change in Victoria, as he laboured with his rowing and, immaculately, the desire to get under cover, to leave the lake and run for shelter, evaporated from his mind. He was suddenly clear of everything else, and she was all he could see, against the backdrop of the grey wave and spit. She, alone, was luminous. He stopped rowing. Looked to the shore. No one could be seen. He pulled the oars into the boat, leaned forward. Was the boat rocking more? Or was it only his balance? Was it his light-headedness? Giddiness? Or were they waves buffeting the white, wooden sides of the vessel?

He anchored himself on her lips. Pressing hard.

_O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again_

When he pulled back, lips doused in rainwater, her mouth was open and her eyes wide in shock. Spluttering a little, she gasped,

“You said you wouldn’t not kiss me.”

“I changed my mind.”

When they reached the shore, William helped Victoria from the boat. Her slippers were soaked from the puddle that had formed in the rowing boat, and her entire form was dripping. William wasn’t any drier.

“Oh, William!” Victoria giggled, “You are soaked!” He was clutching his black coat in his arms, and replied,

“You are not much drier!” Then, he held out the jacket, and said, “Here, wear this. It is a little damp, but will keep you from the cold. You mustn’t catch a chill.” He guided her gently into the garment, wrapping it around her shoulders. It swallowed her. Her small frame was dwarfed in the great, broad shoulders and the bottom of the coat almost came down to her feet. It looked comical, but William did not laugh, for she looked quite beautiful. Pulling it more tightly around her, the wool was toasty and, despite being a little damp as he had warned her, she felt entirely safe.

The smell of him was on it, still. The warm note of musk, a smell so typically masculine that it evoked something subconsciously feminine in her, setting it alight. Then the warm softness of parchment, and the work it would entail, the endless words that could be unwrapped on the leaves of it. The slightly sour scent of ink, that would unravel the words in that mind she loved so dearly. The gentle waft of flowers, from Brocket’s gardens, and a hint of cedar from the perfume he wore. And then something entirely original, entirely him, slightly unusual – mandarin? It was citrussy. Like orange blossoms, but warmer, hotter. She wanted to be enveloped in the smell, completely. Her white dress was sunken in the black of his coat, and together they walked, towards shelter, where they found the rest of the group, far less wet.

“Victoria! Where have you been?” Albert asked, running to his wife, about to take her in his arms when he pulled back, troubled by the alien coat around her body.

“Only out on the water, Albert. I am quite alright,” she replied, bluntly, before seeing her daughter wrapped in Emma’s arms over her husband’s shoulder and crying out, “Oh, Vicky! You must be cold!” And then she ran right past Albert and towards her daughter. Albert remained. Melbourne walked onwards, suddenly feeling bare and naked in only his shirt, make translucent by the flood. Melbourne swallowed, feeling the prince’s gaze on him.

“It was not appropriate for you to be out on the water with the Queen, unaccompanied,” he muttered, stopping William in his tracks. His heart sunk to the bottom of his chest, where it felt leaden. Remembering her kiss, remembering his love, but reminding himself of the promise he had made – that this would go no further, that this was finite, that this would come to an end, he replied,

“You are right, sir.” Albert scoffed. “But, this time next week, you will need no longer worry yourself about any of it.” Melbourne turned to Albert. He was honest, open, earnest. His look was serious. “You have my word.”

Albert’s jaw clenched.

Victoria noticed that Ernest had become quite quiet, and looked quite often between herself and her ex-Prime Minister. He was usually so occupied in conversation with Harriet Sutherland, that he hadn’t the time to look so serious, and look to often at Victoria. He did not seem sad. He did not seem happy, neither. Just occupied in thought. Whatever could be the matter with him? She wondered, but did not think to pry.

Frogmore was so beautiful in the rain, she thought. If only this could last forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, as always, for all your kind words and comments - they really do mean so much. I must say, this is the most rewarding fic, as I writer, I have ever written for this fandom. I am very much enjoying it - and I can only hope that you are too! Thank you for your continued support.


	8. Three Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flowers and fighting.

There were two rows of lime trees, and Victoria and Lord Melbourne – three days before their final goodbye – walked between them, in the gardens of Victoria’s childhood: beside Kensington Palace. Even now, after all these years, the garden walls felt to her like a prison. And, even with her dearest friend close beside her, her mind could not ease into the enjoyment of the improved weather. She scratched the back of her hand so fiercely that she could have torn it to ribbons, and she chewed on her lip until a distinctive metallic taste flicked her tongue. William noticed the Queen’s ill-ease and, spotting a patch of shining yellow flowers beside the path, he stooped, exclaiming,

“Buttercups.”

Victoria stopped, glaring down at the older man as if he were mad.

“What of them?”

“Here, Victoria, let us see if you like butter…” he muttered, picking a buttercup by the stalk, and standing back up with the tiny flower between his finger and thumb. He was smiling at her. Victoria blinked.

“Well, of course, I like butter,” she said, plainly, shrugging her shoulders. Then, noticing how William did not seem at all confused or put-off by her bewilderment, she asked, “Are you quite alright?”

“You have never heard of buttercups?” he asked, holding the flower aloft, and casting a pleased eye over its diminutive, frankly unimpressive, form as if it were something of great significance: a religious totem, a thing of fine craftmanship, an object of opulence.

“I have seen them before.”

“But you have never heard of the game children play?”

“What game?”

“You take a buttercup,” he explained, patiently, “and hold it.” He held the flower a few centimetres beneath Victoria’s chin, which made her giggle, “Hold still,” he insisted, stifling his own chuckle. She pursed her lips and suppressed her smiles, though the situation seemed quite ridiculous. He was quite close to her, just now, and her breath leapt a little in her throat. She felt warm. “Just here, below the chin. And, if your chin glows yellow…” He observed the golden hue beneath her lips and creeping towards her neck. “You like butter.” He stepped back, looking rather proud of himself.

“But, surely, everyone’s chin glows yellow!” Victoria laughed.

“Well, yes… but children are not known for their logic.” William cast the picked buttercup aside, and motioned to continue walking along, but Victoria stopped him with a cry,

“Here, let us see if you like butter!” Victoria took her turn to stoop beside the path, and she picked the largest buttercup her eyes landed on, with the petals of the glossiest yellow. She plucked it from the ground, scurried back to Lord Melbourne, and raised it to his chin. This humoured him, to which Victoria cried, “Hold still!” William held his chin still, obeying his sovereign, but cast his eyes down to the shorter woman, and watched as her expression turned to astonishment.

“What?” he asked, smiling.

“William…” she gasped, shaking her head a little, “You never told me you hated butter! Whatever do you eat on your toast?” William began to laugh, but Victoria remained serious. “Now we will never agree. Me, loving butter, and you, hating it!”

“You are teasing me,” William smiled, knowing full well that there must be a gold patch on his chin, for the sun was shining bright enough for it.

“Believe me. The buttercup has spoken.”

“’The buttercup has spoken’?” he mocked as Victoria tore the flower away from him. “Give that here!” Victoria held it at arm’s length behind her back. “Victoria!”

“No! Not after you have doubted it so!” she cried, breaking down in a fit of giggles. William held his hand out, palm to the sky, but Victoria was firm. “No. No!” William darted a hand towards the flower behind her back. Victoria squealed, turning in a circle, and lifting the flower as high as she could in the air. She forgot, however, that William was taller than she, and so he was able to pluck the flower from her hand as easy as taking a ripe apple from the arm of a tree. Victoria huffed, like a small child deprived of her fun.

William did not take long to give the flower back, however. He took the small bud, and slipped it behind her ear, so that it sat prettily at the side of her face. Her stroppy expression turned to one which blushed.

“I may not love butter, Victoria,” William said, “But I do love the wearer of the buttercup.”

Victoria paused,

“I do not think I have ever received a more unusual compliment.”

This made them both laugh, and Victoria began to lead the way along the path, as they had been before. After a moment, Victoria spoke again,

“I suppose my childhood was an unusual one, not to have ever played that game.”

“Not unusual, necessarily… but it is safe to say that your childhood was not like most.”

“Not all young girls are raised to be Queen,” Victoria replied, lightly. William’s tone was more sombre as he said,

“Not all young girls are raised in such loneliness and sadness.” These kind words from her dearest Lord M almost made her weep. He was so thoughtful! No soul had ever taken her side against her mother, against the cruelty shown to her as a child! Glancing sadly at the garden around her, that was burned into her memory as a place of desolation, she explained,

“I remember visiting Plymouth – with Mama – as a girl.” William slowed his walk, to listen to the story. “I was there to greet my ‘people’. But I remember seeing a great crowd of drunken-looking men. _Hardy_ men. And I was so little and young that they all frightened me and I could not imagine ever having any power over them. I was on a ship, and I was made to jump from it. Mama insisted. I was so scared. And there were so many people. And I wept for fright. I remember weeping, and weeping, and no one caring a jot for how many tears I spilled.” Even now, the memory of it seemed to haunt Victoria, and fresh tears pricked into her pale eyes. William felt hot: struck with an anger that was useless, now, years later. He felt undeniably protective. But what could he do? He brushed it aside, and tried to make the woman laugh,

“I have heard it said that all men from Plymouth are drunkards.” Victoria turned her head up at this, a weak smile painting her face. “I suppose they must drink themselves silly, to drown out the sound of the seagulls and the smell of rotting seaweed.” Victoria did laugh at this, and they continued to walk in the dappled light. “How old were you?” William asked eventually. Victoria shrugged and replied,

“Fourteen.”

 _Is that all?_ William thought. How cruel. To treat one’s own daughter so treacherously, at only the young age of fourteen? It made him blister. He knew, if he had been so blessed as to have a daughter grow to that age, he would have treated her with boundless love and respect. She would have been dearer to his heart than his own soul. Dearer to him than the hope of another sunrise. If only.

“My childhood was not a good one. When I meet people, and they tell me stories, as one often does about the pretty, florid days of youth - oh, it all sounds so perfect, so idyllic. I just wish… I…” Victoria sighed, stopping for a moment beside a rolling bank of grass, before lowering herself to sit on its slope. She was in arcadia. The studded Venus was her, and the picture of pastoral elegance painted her features, yet she seemed sad. William joined her, on the grassy bank.

“It is often easy to imagine that the lives of others are perfect, when in fact they are far from it,” he said, plucking at the grass, and rolling it between his finger and thumb until they turned green.

“Playing buttercups!” she laughed, humourlessly, “That is a childhood I could only have dreamt of. I never had companions. My only playthings grew dusty, and I was bound to the schoolroom which was always dark, and stuffy. But, growing up at Brocket, you must have had so much light, and so much love, always. And all those brothers and sisters! And grounds without edge or border, unkept, and fascinating!”

“I am a bastard,” William said, boldly. “Illegitimate, I mean.” Victoria blinked in the sunlight, and was dumb for a while. Her face gave away no sense of shock, or scandal, but remained a strange silent serenity – which gave away neither approval nor distain. William returned her gaze, mildly. “I knew my father was not my own.” Then, she talked, but only for a second, so she only said,

“You…?”

“Victoria?”

“You are illegitimate?” she repeated, turning her gaze to the ground where it skipped over grass and pebble, before landing back on Lord Melbourne’s face. “When did you find out?”

“I was very young,” he said.

“How did you-?”

“It does not trouble me anymore. But everyone has flaws, and problems, and regrets…”

“Why did you never think to tell me?” Victoria asked, disallowing his gradual change of subject. William gawped for a moment.

“It never seemed appropriate-“

“Appropriate?”

“Well, you are the Queen of England.” The sweep of something jovial to his voice only made Victoria crosser. “You cannot expect me to divulge you in all the details of my personal life.”

Victoria’s cheeks began to grow hot.

“Queen of England? I thought I was more to you than that, William.”

“You are!” he said, quickly, “Of course you are. But there are some topics that… that any man must refrain from discussing with an unmarried woman.”

“But you were always so candid with me,” Victoria replied, still oddly quiet, yet a shadow was creeping across her brow, “You did not think it appropriate to tell me you are a bastard?” She was severe. Harsh. Made of ivory and metal. Her words pierced William, and his wounds would weep were he less guarded. There was something cruel – that he had never seen or heard from her before.

“It’s not like it really matters, Ma’am,” Melbourne said, chuckling slightly, though his mood gave no warrant for humour, reverting to his formal approach to conversation as an armour against Victoria’s increasingly angered tone.

“It matters to me.” Melbourne’s stomach clenched. “It matters very much to me. I wish you had… I wish you had told me!” Melbourne was about to protest again, when Victoria asked, “Who is your father?” William stammered. Clutching for words in the air. Nothing came. There was no reply. What could he say?

“I cannot be sure-”

“Cannot be sure?” Victoria cried, “How can you say such a thing?” She turned from him quite suddenly. This was an alien world to her. She had been raised on Christian virtues – almost puritanical – the Germanic code that taught of faithfulness and chastity. She had neglected them, once, as a ripe girl of eighteen, only just Queen, only just free. But as a woman, she had recaptured those teachings.

“They were different times, Ma’am.”

“Evidently!” Victoria threw herself to her feet, brushing her skirts.

“It was the world I grew up in and, therefore, I will defend its merits to the last. It was not short of its debaucheries, but-”

“That is not right,” Victoria muttered, mostly to herself.

William felt the urge to argue. The Georgian period was imperfect, yes, but it was almost entirely him. This new era – Victoria’s era – was beautiful, ripe with change, progress, the herald of a new and bright future, perhaps, but he could never truly belong to it. He was a Georgian man. And the Georgian people were his peoples: damaged, but good at heart, depraved but untainted. There was something pure in the excesses of his past. These were people liberated, at their most base, but enjoying comedy and wine, enjoying company and sex and the theatre and make-up. Good people. To stiffen people, to push their backs against boards and force it until they were rigid and upright, would only cause damage, William thought.

There, he supposed, they would always differ.

“Was everyone quite so… prolific?” she asked, calming herself a little. William coloured. The names of women, not reams and reams of ladies, but a few, who he had been privately engaged with at one time or another, through his life, his boyhood, his manhood, returned to his mind. The clever Caroline Norton, his first truly strong attachment after Caro’s death. The wonder of Emma Portman, who he loved as a companion to his very soul: a devout friend, and one-time lover. And others, more brief, more blistering, more explosive, and dangerous. Women who he could hardly remember the face of, or the name, but he could remember their skin, their flesh. Flashes of these women. He had not been prolific by his own standards, certainly – but by Victoria’s? He cleared his throat.

“No… Ma’am… I cannot say I was debauched, per se… but there was a certain… a certain purity…”

“Purity? To bear children out of wedlock?” She tried hard to keep up with him.

“Perhaps not purity, then… but there is goodness in it. The people I knew were good people!”

“I would hate to think that my mother…” But Victoria stopped herself before she could say anything more. William had heard enough and – quite forgetting himself – became heated in his reply,

“How can you become so suddenly scandalised by the idea of an affair, and yet you were perfectly willing to engage in one with me, only a few days ago?”

Victoria spluttered a reply, caught off-guard by the frankness of Lord M’s words, and the anger in his features,

“That is not at all the same, William!”

“Why not, for God’s sake?”

“I do not want to be your lover!” Victoria cried, heedless of being overheard. A flock of birds in an overlooking tree were frightened by her cry, and there were a series of great cracks as they took to the air. “It is not through want of your body that I long for you so! The love I bear you is not carnal. I do not want an affair only in the flesh, but in soul and heart and mind, William.” She silenced him utterly. A pang struck his soul, that he had acted so foolishly towards her, but apologies did not seem tactful. Victoria, too, was feeling the bitter aftermath of regrettable behaviour and, youth willing her on, she spoke first, “I am sorry, William. I did not mean to make you feel… inadequate. I was shocked, that is all. I had no idea. It is such a different world.”

They had both acted rashly, hot-bloodedly. They had been angry, and harsh. But it would be unfair to blame them entirely for their erratic behaviour - for time, like the sharp edge of a blade - was pressing into their minds. Time was short. Growing shorter. They hadn’t the time left to feel or speak or act. Not enough time. Their nerves were frayed. Their spirits strained. They were not themselves. Not fully.

“You did not…” William sighed before, remembering his composure, he straightened up, and replied in a far more amiable tone, “I should not crucify you for knowing little of a world of which you have never known – nor should I blame you for viewing it with suspicion.” Then, casting his eye to his shoe, his throat tightening to the point where he thought he should not be able to draw breath, he asked, “You do not mind that I am illegitimate?”

“No!” Victoria cried, taking his hands, willing his eyes up from the ground until they laid on her. She gave him a reassuring smile. “I do not think any less of you. I do not think any less of anyone… I… it is just…”

Victoria struggled, fought, to tame the whirring of her mind, the words that would deafen her, into an order and a reason that she could understand herself, let alone get anyone else to understand. She sat down, again, beside Lord Melbourne, who was breathing deeply, coming down from a high of anger.

“I am a Queen,” she began, slowly, thoughtfully, “and therefore I have been forced to marry where my heart is not engaged.” William’s heart tugged at its own strings. “When I express a longing – a need – to be with you, it is a gesture of the utmost faithfulness, for my love is faithful to you. I was distressed, simply because I have trouble understanding how one can justify unfaithful behaviour, when one has had the choice to marry where one pleases, and so can choose to marry, from the beginning, the one they are – in soul – faithful to.” William nodded. He understood her very well.

“I must not think I advocate such behaviour where it is not due. I struggle to see how anyone could be faithful to Lord Byron in soul.”

“See? You understand! Caroline Lamb should never have acted so! For she was bound to you in duty as one who had the choice… and chose you.”

“What a little fool,” William muttered. He sounded hollow. Victoria took his face in her two hands very suddenly, leaning over the grass. There was a rough stubble on his chin which scratched her hands, supple and unworked. A weak smile, sad, ghosted across her lips, and her teary eyes searched his face. She shook her head, silently.

“She was right to choose you… and wrong to leave you.” A sob stifled her words, and she turned her face to the ground, breathing deeply, and regained her composure enough to whisper, “And, if I were able, I would have chosen you without a second thought.”

“I wish you had been free.”

“So do I.” Victoria brushed a thumb across his cheekbone. William grasped the hand which cupped his face, and stroked the back of it, pressing it tighter to his bones. He closed his eyes, and breathed, and with the breath came the smell of her perfume on the inside of her wrist. He could get drunk on the scent.

His mind was aflame. She had, again, expressed her longing for a – what to call it? – an affair? A scandal? A moment of perfection? And he wanted it. He wanted it with so much of his heart that there was only the smallest fraction which railed against it. But that fraction existed. Though she was engaged to him and soul and heart and mind, she was wedded to Albert in law. However hollow. However loveless. However regrettable and base. That was law. That was holy. That was immovable. And, though he knew better than most that marriage was no prevention to sexual conduct with another, he could not allow himself to do that to her. It would only make it more painful. It would only cause her trouble. It would only risk shame.

It would be selfishness, plain and pure, to allow heaven on to earth.

She must understand that too, he told himself. But he was unsure.

“You understand, Victoria… that we cannot…” His voice was weak. It was carried away on the back of the wind.

“Yes.” Her voice was firm, and she let go of his cheek. An affair would be foolishness. Foolishness. Nothing more. Only a fool would do it. She told herself. Again and again. She tempered her disappointment with a shrug and the shake of her head. “I do not ask you anymore. I am happy.”

“Yes,” he replied. Happiness. She was happy. So was he. Of course, he was happy.

“Only three days, Lord M,” she said, wistfully, talking as much to the whispering leaves as she was to him. The sunlight on her face was warm and pretty. “Tomorrow it shall be only two. And then it will be our final day.”

“I will miss you, Ma’am,” he said, earnestly. Victoria had to bite her tongue to prevent another sob. She squeezed her eyes shut. He must not see. He must not see.

“I will miss you, too.”

“What do you wish to do tomorrow?” William asked, observing the tree which Victoria had gazed so intently at. It was a vivid green; and seemed quite alive, quite active. There were the beginnings of blossoms on its branches, little buds, the heralds of the springtime that – given time – would flourish and bloom. If they were to be white, virginal, or tinged pink like the cheeks of a blush: one could not be sure yet. For they were still closed, and quiet, and shy.

To dip two thumbs ever so softly into the folds of petals – where it was soft, and warmed by the springtime – and to carefully prise them apart, to marvel at the flower before its time, to see whether it would blush or be immaculate. The soft, thin petals which quiver in the breeze, and the breeze of one’s breath. To open, and let bloom. To discover. Things hidden and far off. William squinted in the light.

“I would like to come to Brocket Hall.”

“Of course. I, too, would like that. Very much.”

“May I stay overnight? I would like to spend our last day there. It is so peaceful in the country.” Even at Kensington, where it seemed an arcadia, there was the rumble of the city.

“Yes, yes, certainly. Brocket is at your service.”

The buttercup in her hair looked so fair. Her face lit up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's important to stress that - at this point - Victoria is not the young, impressionable girl anymore, so it's likely that her and Lord M would disagree on topics such as these, leading to a bit of a tiff! Victoria was, after all, the leader of a very conservative nation. But, of course, their love endures, and she would be quite happy to excuse such behaviour for Lord M... ;)


	9. Two Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria goes to Brocket Hall.

“The pink silk today, Miss Skerrett.”

Skerrett, silently and obediently, with all the grace of manner of the perfect lady’s maid. Dormouse-like: that was the way. Movements made gently and kept small. No unnecessary action, and all actions calculated before performed. And, with her actions, she laid the pink silk gown out on the Queen’s bed, for her to inspect.

Victoria stood at the side of the bed. The gown was a pale orange-pink – like the dye on the clouds when the sun is only just beginning its descent towards the black horizon – and threaded with flowers, crafted into the silk. The flowers were small, delicate, and composed of deep, russet oranges and flashing whites and creams and golds. She thought it was the most beautiful dress she owned and, nodding, she allowed Skerrett to guide her small body into the fabric and she stood, trembling a little, as the dress was tied deftly at the back. Her hair had been braided and twisted into a bun, with two loops of braided hair circling her ears. Looking in the mirror, she had expected to feel like a little girl again, like a silly child, but she felt sincerely beautiful.

“Thank you, Miss Skerrett,” Victoria said, pinching her cheeks to bring colour to them. She had not slept well the night before – and she feared that her pallor was revealing the deficiency. Skerrett bowed her head, and told the Queen that it was her pleasure, and prompt quitted the room. Victoria remained.

Skerrett had left a pair of stockings on the bed. This was as the Queen requested. She was left alone to take the soft white material, and gently tug it over her foot, her knees, over her thigh, where she tied pink ribbons to secure them. There was no noise but the ruffle of her petticoats and the faint brush of the fabric against her bare skin. This was a ritual, of sorts, for her this morning. She wanted to be alone. She took her time. She breathed, and the spring air seemed to fill her, the sunshine doused her in light and she became a flower in the bud.

For, today, she was to go to Brocket Hall.

The carriage was prepared, and she moved as light as a feather on her feet, hurrying down the corridors towards the carriage. She did not want the day to become too late before she set off. She wanted to spend the day in his company, in that beautiful place. She was prepared.

“You will not go to him today.”

Victoria was tying the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin when she was stopped in her tracks by Albert’s exclamation.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, turning to her husband, slipping the bonnet back from off her braided hair. Pendant braids. She hadn’t worn pendant braids in years, Albert thought.

“I will not allow you to go to Lord Melbourne today.”

“I am very sorry, Albert, but I am already engaged. I have told him I am coming to Brocket today,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone that grated on Albert’s ears.

“Then send a note, to tell him you are not.”

“Well, I do not see why I should have to do that!”

“Because I forbid it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Noted. Now, if you excuse me,” Victoria said, slipping her bonnet back on, and fussing with the pink ribbons again. Albert continued,

“He said I have nothing to fear, no reason to be jealous. But I did not believe him.”

Victoria did not reply, but turned, having tied her bow prettily beneath her chin, and began to walk away.

“I am your husband and I forbid it!” he shouted after her. She felt hot. She willed the blush away from her cheeks. She must not show weakness. With all her strength, she drew on every teaching that Melbourne had given her in being the composed Queen, and she turned to Albert and, quite calmly said,

“But I am your Queen. And, so, I will go, with or without your permission.”

“I did not put a time limit on your attachment so that you could both act more rashly and inappropriately than ever.”

“Then perhaps you should never have done it,” she replied, a venomous edge to her voice. A smile split her face but tears flooded her eyes. Albert’s heart sunk. “Good day, Albert.” She turned on her heel, and turned a corner, and descended the stairs, and then tumbled from the doors of the palace and into the carriage, where at last she could breathe again. And breathe she did: gasping for air like a guilty thing before the court, desperate and dying. She pressed her stomach with her hands, bound in a corset so tightly she felt she would explode with the pressure, and pushed her head back into the seat until a headache seized her. When Emma arrived to accompany her on the journey, the figure of the Queen met her, dolled up in her beautiful silks and coils, but red-faced, gleaming with a sheen of sweat, and bleary-eyed.

“Your Majesty? Are you quite well enough to travel?” Emma asked, leaving the carriage door open in preparation to bundle the little woman through and take her immediately to a sick bed. Victoria gulped and shook her head frantically,

“No! No, Emma, please. I must go!”

The Queen’s voice was frighteningly urgent, and – with some hurry – Emma threw the door shut and tapped on the roof to order the coachman to ride off. As Buckingham Palace stripped away from the windows, and then London, and then the countryside encroached on their view, Emma watched with a furrowed brow as the Queen fought back her tears. But she observed, as the light became blotted further and further with the leaves of trees, and as the cries of the rooks became thicker and louder, the Queen’s tears dried, and a hopeful look gleaned in her eye. Brocket-bound. Emma, too, had known that excitement.

What an effect a man can have on a woman. Emma found herself laughing inwardly at how clueless the man was, of the effect he had. She could remember her younger days, visiting the Lamb family at Brocket Hall, gazing dreamily from the window of the carriage as it trundled down country lanes that seemed like a pastoral wonderland. She would bite her lip, and shun the conversation from her family, and stay in blissful silence, her mind playing out a million different scenarios – always ending the same way. In all her fantasies, as a young woman, barely beyond a girl, ended in marriage to William Lamb. Oh! What a bliss it would have been!

She could see the same hopefulness in Victoria’s eyes. And, yet, she knew that the same impossibility that she confronted when realising William’s love for Caroline currently faced Victoria, as a Queen, and as a wife.

How could it possibly be fair? For God to have made such a good man, and yet make him so impossible to be truly loved by. His soul was far off. But he was easy to adore.

Before either of them knew it, they had arrived at Brocket Hall, and the red brick expanse of it was opening itself to them. And, with it, William too was revealed to them. He waited outside the front door, smiling politely to see the carriage pull up. He had woken very early, with anticipation perhaps (though he would never have admitted it, for it seemed juvenile). He had tried to distract himself with reading all morning, but he ended up just scanning words rather than understanding sentences. He had eaten a little and tried to make himself look presentable – but he was not entirely happy with what he saw. He never would have been happy. In reality, today, Lord Melbourne was looking at his most handsome. His hair had more curl in it than usual, and the grey was looking bright and silvery. His eyes were alive, green like the leaves when the sunlight passes straight through them, with veins, slightly darker, weaved through. His clothes were fashionable and fitted him perfectly.

Victoria hadn’t the time immediately to realise how handsome he looked, as her emotions were getting the better of her. She threw herself from the carriage the moment it drew to a halt, and she threw herself into the arms of William Lamb. He staggered backwards at the force of her, but wrapped his arms around her nonetheless. Instinctually.

“Oh, William! I have been so unhappy! I hate it. I hate it.” She buried her head into the shoulder of his jacket. The wool was scratchy, but it felt sublime against her forehead. As did the strength of his arms around her back.

“Victoria? Whatever has happened?” he asked, gently. Victoria heard the click of the carriage door as Emma climbed out and, having no time to reply, she dragged herself away from the taller man’s embrace, and wiped her eyes hurriedly.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” Emma cried, seeing the Queen’s sudden distress. She was blinked at by both parties.

“Emma…?”

“Forgive me, Ma’am. But if I have to spend the entirety of two days with you two tiptoeing around, afraid that I will suspect something: I will go mad. I have been privy to all, Ma’am. You need not fear my counsel.”

“Privy to all?” Victoria asked, beginning to blush.

“William has confided in me.”

“Oh!” Victoria turned to Lord Melbourne, who was looking guiltily back at her. She creased her brows. He nodded. There was a moment when William was sure she would be angry, and his heart tensed to think of it, but then she began to laugh. “Oh, Emma, I am so glad you approve!”

“Of course, I approve, Ma’am.”

Emma turned to Melbourne and noticed he was looking straight at her. His eyes thanked her. She turned her gaze bashfully to her feet. She only wanted him to be happy. That was all she ever wanted.

The ladies and Lord Melbourne filed into the hall, at which point he offered them a tour of the house.

“That won’t be necessary, Lord M, thank you. I would much rather sit and talk with you.” William raised his eyebrows in surprise, but obliged his monarch, and led the group through to the library, which he used so often as a sitting room. Brocket Hall was so pale and airy. The very light of the springtime seemed to permeate the walls, and give life to the indoors with billowing muslin curtains and fractals of broken sunlight in glasses and chandeliers. Even the library – a room of a house which Victoria had always considered to be dull and gloomy and hazy with dust and decay – was an exquisite example, as bright and fresh as anywhere else on the estate. The number of books quite struck Victoria. Rows and rows, shelves and shelves, making walls of their own, separated only by the hairline gaps between spines. There were very thick volumes towards the top of the bookcases – leather-bound with gold lettering and decoration on the spine – copies of great works that collected thick layers of dust. Hand-me-downs, surely, and scarcely read. Then, as Victoria’s eyes worked lower down the bookcases, there were more recognisable volumes. Dickens, Austen, Shelley, Milton and Keats, to name only a few whose names Victoria did settle on. Then, beside the armchair on which Lord Melbourne’s dressing gown was folded, and which was rather battered-looking and sunken from use, there were copies of Shakespeare, within easy distance from the armchair which was surely Lord Melbourne’s favourite. There were individual copies of almost all of the Bard’s plays. And each copy was small enough to fit in the pocket, but well bound and well cared for. They were beautiful little things, exquisite.

“You seem rather interested in my copies of Shakespeare, Ma’am,” Melbourne remarked, having followed the woman’s gaze. He stooped down, and took a small green book from the shelf, and opened it in the palm of his hand. “Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do.” At this, Victoria breathed a small laugh. Oh, how the words were right! A madness indeed. For it was madness to run away from her husband as she had done. It was madness to be so infatuated with a single soul. It was madness to be torn apart, and madness still to fight it.

“What play is that?” Victoria asked, approaching the armchair which Melbourne was perched on the arm of.

“As You Like it.”

“I cannot say I am completely familiar with it. Are you, Emma?” Victoria asked.

“I have seen it a couple of times, Ma’am,” Emma replied, eyeing up the bookcases herself.

“We must-“ William began, before he quickly halted his speech. The shock of stopping his own words made him slam the covers of the book shut, and purse his lips together as he sighed through his nose. Victoria watched his colour turn white.

“William?”

He was about to say that they must go and see it together soon, but he remembered that any companionship between the two of them beyond two days’ time was an impossibility. There would be no theatres, no operas, no plays. No time. William forced a smile, and replied,

“It is nothing, Victoria.”

She was not convinced, and would have argued with him if it weren’t for Emma who – at that moment – remarked fondly,

“The weather is so fine outside! Perhaps we could take a walk beside the Broadwater?”

It was high in the afternoon, when the air was balmy, and Emma lead the way as Victoria and William followed. All were silent. Emma had suggested the walk in the hope that it would loosen the two lovers into a conversation – but this would clearly be more difficult than she first hoped. The Broadwater was clear as crystal, and the soft trickle of the stream was music to ears. A natural symphony against the bleak cawing of the rooks. Victoria watched them: they swooped into trees, black and ruffled, and turned their silvery beaks to the sky in order to let loose their great cracking cries. She hadn’t a fondness for rooks before she met Lord M, but now the sound of one made her feel warm.

Of course, the rooks would be going soon, for the summer was only just around the corner. And, with them, her Lord M would leave too.

Do not think on that, she reminded herself.

They reached a bend in the Broadwater that gave way to a broad and pretty bank. Emma sat herself down, and William joined her. Victoria – the youngest of the group – took to paddling in the shallows of the water, and her friend watched her. Emma would have thought he was looking at an angel.

“You are smitten, William.”

“I am,” he replied. “She is incredible.”

“You once said she was artless.”

“She is,” William laughed, watching as she laughed – a laugh as clear as the water which kicked at the ankles she bared to the stream – and smiled to the sky, turning back to him over her shoulder, “But I am sick and tired of falsehoods and flatterers.” Victoria’s stockings lay on the bank. They made William feel giddy, to even look at them. Emma noticed him looking, and smiled to herself. Oh, smitten was no word for it. He was in love.

Victoria, feeling freed by the rush of water between her toes and around her bare legs, was turning back to Lord M to see his smile almost every minute. She noticed how his eyes were always on her whenever she turned. Was could he possibly be thinking? She hoped he was thinking of her.

Victoria had dried her legs in the sun, before pulling her stockings back on. Lord Melbourne and Emma Portman walked further off to allow Victoria privacy to do this. When she joined them, she was huffing with exercise, and feeling sleepy from the sound of the stream and the brush of water on her skin. They returned to the house with flushed cheeks and wide smiles, just as the sun was setting and the sky was beginning to grow dark. The servants had lit the candles, and the airy white glow that had filled the house only this morning had become a deep golden haze. Victoria felt oddly light-headed, amongst the flickering candlelight. There was something heady about it. She felt intoxicated, like one is in a dream. She felt not entirely in control of herself, and so she sat down in the library to ease her unsteady head. Lady Emma had retired to her room. Lord Melbourne had taken off his jacket, and was now sat near Victoria in the library, haloed in the light, and unbound. Victoria was the first to speak,

“The gardens of Brocket are very beautiful, Lord M,” Victoria said.

“Do you think so?”

“Exceptionally.” William smiled,

“I am glad you like them.”

“The gardens at Buckingham Palace are so stifling. So perfect, and preened, and false. I do not like it half as much as I love Brocket. The gardens here are so varied. There is the greenhouse, which is beautifully Edenic. Then there is the Broadwater, which is excessively romantic. Then the grass, which seems to stretch forever. And the forest which one feels they could get lost forever in. And the rookery…” The next words on Victoria’s lips evaporated with a thought, and her lips fell open, with not a noise breaching them.

“The rookery?” Lord M repeated.

“I wish you had said yes.”

William closed his eyes. A shuddering breath broke through his nostrils, and heaved his chest which closeted a thundering heartbeat. She looked so beautiful, sat near him in her pink silk. In his house, in the country. There was no one around – no fear – no apprehension. He could do anything he liked now, and that prospect frightened him immensely. Oh, she was far too lovely. Her blue eyes were sad, and looked to him with all the need and longing that he wished to show in return, but daren’t.

“You are talking about the autumn,” he said. His chest ached, and felt tight. There was a pain in his throat and inside his head, sharp and constant. “When you proposed.” The words were poison to his remembrance. How he hated to think of it now. If he could go back. If only.

“Of course, I am!” Victoria cried.

“Victoria, listen to me.” She was listening. She always had been. “If I had said yes to you, that autumn day, by the rookery… nothing would have changed.”

“What do you mean?” she replied, “Of course, it would all have changed! We would have been married, as we have always wanted!”

“No,” he said, quite harshly. Victoria was silenced, hurt. “No, Victoria,” he repeated, softer now, “We would have been subject to the same scorn and scandal as we are now. There is no escaping that, no matter what I could have said that day.” If he could go back, he would have said yes. But he could not tell her that. To tell her that would be torture. “It is far better that I denied you. No matter how, privately, I may have protested.”

“How can you say that?” Victoria replied, flying to her feet before throwing herself at her knees before Lord M’s armchair. Shocked, he pushed himself back into the chair, but she took his hands in hers before he could force himself to escape. “When I am so miserable? Any scandal, any scorn, any hatred they could have thrown at us for marrying, is nothing compared to the misery I feel being married to one I do not love!”

“Miserable, Ma’am? Really?”

“Yes!” Victoria cried, fresh tears in her eyes that convinced Lord Melbourne at once, “I am so miserable without you! I will be so miserable without you!”

“Oh, Victoria… I… I do not know what to say… I…” he stammered. Victoria could feel his hands tense. She could see his legs pushing into the floor. She could see his eyes moving from her to the door. He was afraid. Afraid that she would push herself on him. Afraid that he could not control his actions. Afraid that they might actually do something _good_. Victoria drew his hands towards her and kissed them. Melbourne melted at the touch of her lips. His mind turning to clouds: a material just as infinite and just as drifting.

Victoria stood up, quite resolved to quit the room, go upstairs, and go to sleep, and – indeed – she proceeded towards the door to do so when, quite unexpectedly, she turned around and said, completely confidently,

“I said that I did not agree with affairs, Lord M. But, if you recall, I argued that there are… circumstances… in which certain conduct, away from the marriage bed, seems… _right_.”

William shook his head, heaving himself from his armchair, and breathing,

“Victoria…?”

“In cases of… of marriage where one would not choose it. In cases in which there is another… that one was forbidden from… that, in another life, would be the only clear choice, the only possible companion to them.”

“I…”

“I also said I would not ask you again! I remember saying that, trust me, I do. And I did not intend to ask you again. I promise. But… oh, Lord Melbourne… I must.”

She was asking him for an affair. She had asked before – in roundabout ways – but never quite this explicitly. And never before had they been alone. And never before had she looked so purely beautiful. And never before had his guard felt so low. William’s hand clenched.

 _Damn the constitution_ , William thought. _Damn Albert. Damn the monarchy. Damn duty. Damn England. Damn it all to hell. What good would it do them?_

It began with a kiss. They had kissed before. This one should have been no different. But there was something in the force of it, the heat of it, that left Victoria in no doubt of his intentions – before he had even lain a hand on her.

But then the hands came. On her back. On her arms. Her face. Her neck. Then, unusually, passing across her corset, where the material was thick and tight, but then to her breast. His fingers brushed her skin where there was no material at all. She gasped, pulling away from his kiss, her breast swelling with air beneath his hand.

“Lord M?” she whispered.

“Do you want this, Victoria? Tell me,” he panted, feeling hot all of a sudden. His eyes were dark. They made Victoria’s stomach clench. The breath in her bosom shuddered. William felt it. She licked her lips, which were dry, and swallowed, her throat leaping. No words. No breath for words. Her mind was numb. Overwhelmed. His hands burned her. She nodded. She nodded quickly. William returned her nodding, and let his hand stroke the skin where it was soft like a petal.

“Oh,” Victoria cried, throwing her head back to expose her neck, which William slowly and gently began to pepper with kisses. One. Two. Three. His kisses crept up her neck to her ear. The kiss he planted behind her ear tickled, and made her sigh. But her sigh emerged as a moan. The sound of it frightened her. How could she have made such a sound? It did not sound like a noise she could have made. She could hardly be sure it had come from her.

But William had heard it: loudly and clearly.

“Come, Victoria. Come with me.”

At once. At last. At all.

They moved, half-dreaming, giddy and excited and nervous and shivering, towards William’s bedroom. It had the smell of him. The very room seemed to possess the essence of him. She stood in it – a room she had never before entered – but did not feel a stranger at all. She felt at home. As she had never felt before. It was dark, glowing with the embers of candles which seemed to be dying, so the light was dim and flickering. It caught the high points of his cheekbones, illuminating them, making the shadows of his face more defined. He looked handsome. So handsome. There was a large bed, which made her flame inside. There were papers scattered, bottles emptied, clothes piled instead of filed away. It was a working space - untidy, genuine, a little rugged but homely. And now it was a space for them. A space to love in, to love on. Then his hands were on her again. Unsteady and feather-light. Then pressing harder. Not hard enough to bruise or injure, but to make her flesh give way. Untying the ribbons at the back of her dress, unbinding her hair and letting it fall over her shoulders. Her dress fell to the floor and haloed at her feet. She stepped out of it without hesitation. It rustled as her toes brushed it. She allowed her body, vulnerable and half-naked in only her underwear, to fall towards him. He caught her, and held her, as he kissed her again and again. Victoria felt immortal. She was safe.

"Allow me."

He sat her on the bed. Running two hands up her thigh, she unfurled for him, and he gathered the fabric of her stockings in his hands, and slowly pulled the material from her leg, marvelling as the creamy skin was unveiled to him. Oh. This moment. She smiled, blissfully, as he took the second stocking and pulled her leg free from it. He kissed the exposed skin. This made her giggle, and he chuckled gently, looking up from her thigh to her face. Framed in curling hair, dark, made golden by the candlelight. Her eyes were bright. She looked so endlessly happy. He wanted only her happiness. That was all he could wish.

"William!"

He stood back up, and could hardly tear his eyes from her as he rid himself of his jacket, hurriedly, clumsily, a new force willing him on now.

His body was warm, strange, and heavy. But she was not afraid of it. She was not afraid of the way it moved, of the way it pushed her, of the way he held her. She was not afraid as she was pushed on to the bed. She trembled, yes, but not through fear. He moaned into her skin. His eyes closed. His face relaxed. It was more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. She returned the touches he had bestowed: she ran hands across his chest, then nails which made him whimper. She placed kisses on him. She experimented, tested. She dragged fingers through his hair, soft, and gripped. She discovered. She touched. She peeled away fabric. She smiled. She was delicate and gentle with him, hesitant, but knowing. She wanted to please him. Everything else meant nothing: except for this, here, now. This moment was everlasting and she would remember it for evermore. He sounded real. His voice was gravelly and deep. She adored it. He whispered things which made her breathless. Made her blush. She had never heard such things. She had never heard such love! This was a man stripped back to the purest form. Sighing for her. This was William Lamb without the Prime Minister, without the politician, without the propriety and the class. This was William Lamb as a man and as her lover.

Finally. Eternally.

As he slowly opened the flower-bud, to marvel at the bloom before its time, to see whether it would blush or be immaculate. To open, and let blossom. Victoria cried out,

“Ah!”

“Shh… my love. Victoria.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... there we go. But the story's not over yet. Stay tuned. And all your comments and thoughts are always appreciated, don't forget!


	10. One Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their final day.

When her eyes fluttered open, there was a moment when she did not know where she was.

The high ceilings of Buckingham Palace, which had greeted her morning after morning since she was eighteen years old were no longer before her, as she lay on her back in an unfamiliar bed. These ceilings were lower and the paint was faded. The perfumes of Buckingham did not sting her nose. The sounds of the city did not plague her ears but, instead, there was the faint twinkle of birdsong, and a little rolling sound of water running over stones. There was a strange, heady scent. Masculine. And there was a warmth in the room. It was at this moment that Victoria realised she was naked, with the sheets enveloping her bare skin, and she began to feel the soft rise and fall of another’s body. But not Albert. The cadence was softer. She turned, beginning to remember, and saw William Lamb, still sleeping, beside her on the pillow.

He was turned towards her. His face was free of any emotion, any tension. It sunk into the pillow, entirely contented. His hair was ruffled, and there was stubble on his chin. She remembered how it had scratched her skin, and she grinned, giddily. The sound of his breath, whistling in his nose, made her melt into the mattress. His naked chest was uncovered, and she cast her eyes over the curls of hair that lay there. The hair across his chest had been so soft. She could remember running her hands over it. The morning light – white and musty – streamed through a small gap between the curtains, and fell over his cheekbone. It looked so sharp and pale that she imagined running her forefinger across it and it cutting her. His eyelids were dark and deep and closed. She remembered how his eyelids had fluttered the night before, and how that mouth had opened in ecstasy.

But now all was serene, all was silent, and she remembered she was at Brocket Hall, in William Lamb’s bedchamber, naked, and glowing.

Her wriggling woke the older man. He rose from his slumber gently, without a stir, until his eyes flitted open, and the pale green lighted on Victoria. She was looking at him, leaning on her arm. Her hair was falling over a bare shoulder, and she had bunched the blankets up around her breast to conceal her modesty. This made him chuckle inwardly. A blush painted her cheek when she saw him awake and she did not speak, but brought a supple hand to his hair, and began to wind the curls around her fingers, playing with the strands, absent-mindedly. He allowed her to do as she wished. He was still a little numb with the shock of what had happened, but he was filled with a happy warmth. Finally, he rasped,

“You giggle.” His voice was little more than a croak after his night of sleep, for he had slept quite heavily. Victoria could not be sure she had heard him correctly.

“I… what?”

“Giggle.”

“When?”

“When we’re in bed together.” His forwardness made Victoria flush pink, across her chest and over her cheeks. She had no reason to be embarrassed, of course – for nothing had been more joyous.

“When… when we make love?” she asked, hesitantly.

“Yes,” he grinned, running a hand across her waist, on top of the blankets. He traced the curve of her body as it swelled into a hip. Victoria could feel his hand, pushing the folds of material into her skin, and it tickled.

“Do I?”

“Oh, yes.”

Victoria blushed again at this. She had no idea. Albert had never told her she giggled. That is, if she ever did giggle. She could not remember giggling whilst Albert made love to her. But, then, she could not remember giggling last night.

“You must think I’m so silly,” she said, burying her face in her hair to hide her mortification. William only smiled warmly as he replied,

“Not at all.” He lifted her hair from her cheek as if unveiling a curtain, “It is charming.” The picture was beautiful.

“You are…” How could Victoria put it into words? How he had made her feel more like a Queen than she ever had done before. How he had made her feel beautiful and purified. How she had marvelled in his joy and rejoiced in his smiling. How could she find human words for heaven? “You are wonderful, my Lord.” William made a face – disbelieving her words – which made Victoria laugh.

“Wonderful?”

“Yes! Very much so. I did not know I could ever feel that way.” William dipped his head down, hiding an embarrassed smile.

“I am glad I could oblige.”

Victoria squinted in the light that William had been blotting out.

“The sun is coming up,” she remarked, a little dreamily, taking the hand that was still sitting on her hip, and pulling it to her mouth, and laying lazy kisses on his fingers. He could see the white light of day in her eyes, making the bright blue even icier.

“I think the sun has already risen,” he replied, sitting up, pushing the weight of his body up the bed so he could lean on the headboard. If the curtains were not drawn, the light would be blinding. They had overslept. No wonder. Victoria remained bundled in the blankets, still clinging on to his hand. After a moment, she said, quite emptily,

“And it is our last day.”

William turned to the window, upon hearing Victoria say this. He could feel the awful rise of tears, and did not want her to see him cry. He hid his face.

“What do you wish to do?” Victoria asked, concerned at his lack of reply. She cast an eye up to his face, but saw that he had hidden it from her. But, hearing her question, he turned back to her. His eyes were a little red, she could see that, but he was smiling bravely at her. He breathed for a long moment, and Victoria could see the skin over his chest rising and falling, at the bidding of his ribcage, at the bidding of his lungs. Then, he spoke,

“I wish to lie here with you forever. Talking, and laughing... making love... and being ignorant of anything else.”

_Oh, my darling… if only._

Victoria brushed a hand across his chest, as she had done last night. The ghosting of her fingers tickled.

“Do you want that, Victoria?” he asked after a moment, seemingly in complete earnest. Victoria laughed at this, humourlessly, at first, before her laugh turned to air, upon realising that William was not laughing with her.

“Of course, I do.” Her voice was flat. William replied with anguished zeal,

“Then, let us.”

“William-“

“No, Victoria, I mean it,” he said, pulling her hand from his chest, and holding it tightly in his grip. She rolled over so she could face him. He seemed almost frantic, clinging to her, bending down to her face as he spoke, “Let us stay here. No one could stop us. What could they do? If you refused to leave? If you refused to leave me?”

“William,” Victoria replied, calmly, though her soul was strained beneath, “You know we cannot.”

“Please,” he choked, desperately. There were fresh tears in his eyes.

“They would drag me away if they had to. You know that,” she replied, cupping his cheek with a hand that she stretched towards him. He nuzzled her palm with his nose. She had never seen him so tender, so raw. She was only hurting him more by refusing him, and that was agony to her. “Do not tempt me, William.”

At this, Victoria pulled herself from the sheets. Her body was loath to move, and heavy, but she forced herself to rise. She dressed herself in her nightgown and sat back down on the bed, rubbing her tired eyes, as William dressed himself. When they were both dressed, they went downstairs together, creeping on carpeted floors and down the staircase to the dining room. They could smell it whilst descending the stairs: sweet jams, toasted bread, warm oats. Turning into the dining room, which had its muslin curtains drawn wide so a white light shrouded it, they saw that Emma was already dressed and eating. She rose upon seeing the Queen enter, but Victoria quickly dismissed her, and sat on a chair close to the cakes that had been laid out.

William sat opposite Victoria, and beside Emma. Emma had a curious expression on her face as she picked at the grapes.

Victoria ate a slice of cake, and her expression was pleasure itself. Her eyes never seemed brighter than when she was indulging in sugary food. Well, almost. Her eyes had looked at him in a similar way last night, William observed, with more than a little pride bringing colour to his cheeks.

Wiping her mouth on a napkin, Victoria leaned her elbows on the tablecloth (something she would never have done in the palace – her mother would have scolded her) said,

“I think I will get dressed.”

“Would you like me to assist you, Ma’am?”

“No, Emma, thank you.” Victoria cried, rising to her feet, and beginning to patter from the room, “I have only packed a light gown. I will manage.” Her smile was bold as she left the room. What followed was a silence. William’s heart was thundering.

Emma had taken a knife to cut her scone into a bitesize triangle, and now she was lifting it from her plate and placing it in her mouth. She chewed, quite contentedly, and swallowed, and then she said, quite plainly,

“I hope you were careful, William. You do not want to get the Queen pregnant.”

William choked on his coffee: slamming the cup down on to the breakfast table, spluttering. Emma watched calmly as the man composed himself, before crying,

“How did you know?” He had turned the same shade of crimson as the jam on her scone. She raised her eyebrows at him. He was still clueless. She sighed, and half-laughed,

“You were not exactly quiet!” His breath skipped a little. Had they been quite so loud? Surely not. Emma’s bedchamber was not even next-door, how could she possibly have heard them when William was sure they had kept the noise to a minimum? “And the walls are thinner than you would imagine. And, besides, even if you had been completely silent, it is hard to ignore the unstifled grins on your faces! Oh, yes, I know you are trying to hide it, but you are positively giddy. You must have impressed her, William. She is glowing.”

“I hope…” William was mortified, and speaking was difficult, “we did not disturb your sleep.”

“I am not a prude, William!” Emma scolded, taking another bite of scone and, with her mouth full, replying, “In fact, it was quite entertaining.” William threw his newspaper up.

“Emma!”

“Not like that, William! Voyeurism is for people with far too much time on their hands.” William chuckled. “No, it is simply that you sounded so happy. She giggles.”

“She does,” William replied, fondly, remembering it well. “She is lovely. Lovely in every way.” His gaze was wistful. Emma had not seen that shine come upon his eyes since he was a very young man indeed, fresh-faced and staring the old, windy world in the face, bracing oneself for the uncertain future with gall. She thought that steeled look had quite abandoned him, as it had done her, with age and an ease carelessness. But he had seemingly recaptured it.

“The moment I met her,” Emma said, pulling herself upright in her chair, “I knew you would be besotted.” William chuckled, half-disbelieving,

“How could you have known that?”

“I have known you my entire life, William. And I have seen you become enamoured of many a more troublesome young lady. She had a certain fire – a quickness – barely perceptible from a gaze, or a flick of the head, or a word or two of her speech but, when taken altogether, she seems to burn.” Emma sighed inwardly, that the same burn had never graced her features, far more like to the water with their muted shades and steady, careful expressions. But she swallowed her pride, reminding herself of that day when Victoria had sat on the throne, and William had laughed with her, stood like a prince beside the Queen. “And, then, when I had returned to my place amongst the ‘common people’, I looked across and saw you together, talking _so animatedly_ , and I was in no doubt that your heart was no longer quite your own.”

“I do not think I shall ever get it back,” William said. She would take his heart, slipped quietly into the pocket of her gown, when she returned to Buckingham, where – for the rest of her long and prosperous reign and life – she would keep it, even after he lay in the ground at Hatfield. A heartless corpse. Feeling a change in the air, William asked, softly, “What did you think? When you saw us together, and you realised?”

“I was so glad. She was exactly the sort of woman who could make you happy.” _In some other life._

“Ironic, then, that she has caused me more agony than even Caro.”

“She has not,” Emma replied, firmly. “The agony has never been her doing. Nor yours.”

“This world is cruel, I suppose.” William’s hands shook. “I hate how she is learning that whilst still young. I should never-“

“William! Don’t you dare regret any of your actions for even a second! You are at no fault!” Emma coloured, and unwanted tears sprung to her eyes. William could see them, glistening in the light, and his fingertips numbed. He had so many people to rage against – why must he always choose himself?

“No,” William muttered, a vague introflection to his tone. “What is the use pining over impossibilities? When we still have hours left together?” He forced a smile which, upon the re-entrance of Victoria, lighted into a genuine smile. She was wearing her brocade. Her hair was down, and long, falling down her back and over her shoulders. And, as if anticipating some great event, some incredible rapture, he almost whispered, as if it were a holy word: “Victoria.”

She smiled at this, brushing her fingers through her hair. She had not let it come free of a bun or braid in the daytime for so long. To feel the sunlight on it, and the light breeze as it swished freely, it was the freedom that he – alone – offered her.

“Would you like to go out, William?” she asked, taking a restless seat at the breakfast table with her companions. William folded his newspaper, and placed it beside his empty plate.

“Out?”

“Perhaps we could explore the forests… there are so many trees in the grounds!”

“Of course, that sounds wonderful. I shall have the horses prepared.”

“No! No, please, that won’t be necessary. I would like to walk out.”

“It is a long walk, Victoria.”

“I think we can manage,” Victoria laughed. William looked to Emma over the breakfast things; she was giving him a smirk. He chuckled under his breath.

“Come on, then.”

So, they set off together, first crossing the tailored grass that kissed Brocket’s feet, then spanning the Broadwater on the bridge – which delighted Victoria, who insisted on stopping and leaning over to look at the water beneath and then insisted on William kissing her on the bridge, which he did, perfectly happily. There was something stinging in the divinity of her kiss – some remembrance that he would not have many more. Then, descending from the bridge, they delved into the woodland. It was a gorgeous woodland, Victoria thought, and even more so now that she was nestled within it, trudging along on foot. Man had no hold here. Flora and fauna reigned supreme. Not even she – Queen of Great Britain – could forbid the grass from growing taller every passing month, command the butterflies to cease their beating wings, or order the flowers to change their soft hues.

Yes. This was almost perfect.

“What if we were to get lost?”

William tipped his head to the side.

“Then we would most certainly perish from lack of food, water, and shelter,” William replied. He gave her a sideways look which made her groan, half-smilingly,

“That is not what I mean!”

“What do you mean?” he smiled.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, ambling. “I just like _this_.”

William liked this too.

The springtime seemed to fade as they got further enveloped in the trees. Leaves became thicker and darker, and trucks dominated the skyline, blotting out the sun. But they walked on, as Victoria willed them, with the faster step and the brighter face. The sound of the Broadwater became indistinct. William could not be sure how long they had been out, nor the direction of their travel, nor the position of the sun to give them the faintest idea. Victoria was entirely content, for the birds were singing and the air was clear.

“I think your wish may have been granted, Victoria,” William said, beginning to flex his left hand as he walked, a sign of growing agitation that Victoria was familiar with, but knew was scarcely seen.

“What do you mean?” she replied, closing the natural space between her and her companion that had formed in the meanders of the walk, and entwining her hands around his arm, pulling it into her body.

“I cannot say I know where we are,” he sighed, stopping in his tracks and looking back down the path behind them – which was more of a vague dirt track than a path, and the dirt was made vaguer by a downpour of rain a few nights ago and the spreading of bluebells which made all routes look identical.

“You mean…” Victoria said, turning back to look where William was looking, “we are lost?” William bit his tongue but Victoria simply laughed. He turned to her with a look of puzzlement. What possible humour could she find in their peril? “Well, perhaps now we shall never be parted!”

William began to search the trees around him, in hope of a certain familiarity to a trunk or a gabble of leaves that would show him the right direction back to Brocket Hall, and Victoria – meanwhile – was touched with the notion that the bluebells, carpeted along the ground, looked like a gathering of pretty bonneted ladies. They waved, as ladies do when greeted by their Queen, and their swaying made the image quite humorous. What a pretty shade of bright purple their bonnets were! Victoria was quite jealous.

“Perhaps we should head towards the sound of water… work from there…”

“Are we really lost, William?” Victoria asked, a sly smile on her face as she moved her attention away from the bluebells. William’s pride stopped his tongue. “Here, I know the way.” She grabbed his arm again, and began to pull him along down a slope, which hadn’t even the vaguest dirt track to offer peace of mind to William.

“Victoria, how can you possibly-?”

“Trust me! I hear voices! This must be the way!”

“This is not even the right direction!”

“Shh!” Unwillingly, he was dragged along by the woman, as they stumbled down the slope, tripping over roots and fallen twigs, and towards the fainted rumble of noise that sounded much like civilisation – but not like Brocket Hall. He felt quite sure that Victoria did not believe she was leading him towards Brocket Hall – she may have been naïve at some time, but she was not a fool – and he also felt certain that she was in hope of some adventure. And, though the peril beat at his mind incessantly, he was caught, like a leaf in the riptide, into following her. She willed him into adventure, too.

Eventually, there was a light amongst the trees, and a clearing beyond, and a steady clear clatter of horses’ hooves and the trundling squeal of wooden carriage wheels. The hum of voices was now clear enough for words to be made out, and Victoria could make out the clear ringing of bells. This was a village. They became sure of that as soon as they had ducked out of the trees, and stood amongst the clearing, in a quietly active street of shops and chatter.

“I did not know there was a market so close to Brocket Hall!”

“We are not so close to Brocket Hall anymore,” William remarked, cynically, but Victoria was already bounding off to the windows of shops, to peruse the wares. It was all exceedingly romantic for her – who was so used to having things made for her, bespoke, all manner of fineries and foibles, priceless. To see such quaint little objects, out for anyone to buy, was delightful to her curtailed mind. William followed her, a curt smile on his face to see his love so joyous. William, himself, had never visited the town before, though he knew it was not too far from his dwelling. He had no need to.

But it was a pretty little place, with small stone houses forming shops. Family businesses. And cobbled streets traversing the markets. Friends greeted each other on corners – long-time no see – and dogs bounded at the heels of their masters. Victoria pointed every individual dog out.

Then they reached a small shop selling women’s wares: necklaces, bonnets, slippers. Victoria entered, a bell ringing to mark her arrival, but no one stirred. Who would have thought that the young woman with her hair falling over her shoulders, wearing simple brocade, would have been the Queen of England? And who would have known that the man following her, in a simple overcoat, grey-haired, was the former Prime Minister? And her lover? Well, the lover thing may have been obvious, by how William’s hand was constantly held, and his eyes lit up to look on her – but what did that matter? Here, they could be husband and wife if they wished.

There was a necklace lying within a cabinet, and Victoria stopped to look at it. It was a shaped piece of metal, quite ordinary, but pretty in its simplicity. The white metal was shaped in a heart, and it was looped on to a glossy strand of bright blue ribbon. The ribbon was the same colour at the bluebells, to the very shade. Victoria was overcome with a troubling emotion – she was _moved_ by the beauty of this unextraordinary object. This was not a diamond-jewelled crown that rivalled the canopy of night’s stars. This was not the pearl necklace that gave competition to the rainbows in its pearlescent shifts. This was a rustic object, made with love.

And it seemed that her heart was metallic, and tied on to a ribbon. And that ribbon was Lord Melbourne. Tethered together, never to be severed.

“Cornish tin,” the shopkeeper – a small, stout lady with a face that struck Victoria as uncommonly kind, though ruddy in complexion – said, seeing the younger lady eyeing the necklace. Victoria was taken aback by the common bluntness of this statement. No “Ma’am”, no “Majesty”, just ripe information, as she would give to any other young lady. She grinned and replied,

“The tin from Cornwall comes all this way?” Her voice had a tone of wonder that baffled the pragmatic shopkeeper, but she was also oddly charmed by this naivety. Naivety is hard to come by in these times, she pondered. She also pondered on the strange way this young woman spoke. Her diction was impeccable, her cadence superb: she clearly wasn’t from around here. It wasn’t that these people were common – far from it – but to hear such a voice still struck them cold.

“The finest tin in the world,” nodded the shopkeeper, taking the necklace from the cabinet, and laying it out on the counter for Victoria to see more clearly. It glinted in the light, and the reflection was crystalline silver, sparking like water and glass, a cold flame. It was beautiful. The light seemed to crack it wide open. Then, she felt William’s presence over her shoulder. She turned, so animatedly, and cried,

“This is Cornish tin, William!”

“Oh, is it? It is very fine.”

“It is beautiful.”

The shopkeeper watched. These two figures were oddly familiar. The man spoke very well, too. He was certainly handsome.

William lowered his voice as he said,

“Here, let me buy it for you.”

“No, I have more than enough money to pay myself!”

“And I am not exactly destitute. Please. Allow me.” He approached the desk, and bought the necklace and, all the while, Victoria watched in a touched silence. And he brought it back to her in a small pouch. He offered to put it on her, but she said she would not want to get it damaged, and so would wear it later.

“Thank you very much,” Victoria said to the shopkeeper on the way out of the shop. Victoria gave her hand to the woman (quite used to having her hand kissed) before she remembered her incognito state and, careful not to embarrass herself, took the woman’s two hands in hers and squeezed affectionately. The woman was taken aback by this display of gratitude: all this lady had done was by a necklace, as other customers may do on any day. But there was something sweet about this lady, and so the shopkeeper gave her a warm smile, and wished her goodbye. William held the door for Victoria as they left the shop.

With hardly enough time for William to even breathe, Victoria had spotted a sweet shop across the road, and dragged William with her to view it. Confectionery and sweetmeats in bright colours arranged so perfectly in the window. It was like something from a child’s dream. William indulged Victoria in this, too, buying her a bag of boiled sweets of different kinds. The man behind the counter was a little bemused to find a grown man – and a gentleman at that – buying sweets, but it was a sale nonetheless. Handing them to her, Victoria took out a round red sweet and popped it in her mouth. It tasted of strawberries.

“That is delicious!”

“I am glad.”

“Here, have one!” Victoria held out the paper bag of sweets. William shook his head.

“No, I haven’t a sweet tooth, I’m afraid.”

“I insist! Take one.”

Sighing, William buried his hand in the bag and took out a green sweet. He sucked on it: apples. Very sweet, and a little sharp.

“Oh,” William said, the sweet making his voice sound funny, “Yes, that is actually rather pleasant.”

Victoria laughed. What a delight his company was to her!

“We should find our way back,” he said, finally. From the village, luckily, there was a trackable road which skirted the forest that they had bounded through. The path was further, but that was no matter, for it gave them time to talk. And, eventually, with the afternoon beginning to take hold, Brocket came into sight. A red-brick cube, proudly standing on a hill. A beacon, Victoria thought. Home.

“Shall I tie your necklace now, Victoria?” William asked, when they were inside and warm. Victoria nodded, and swept her long hair over one shoulder to give him access to her neck. She could feel the cold on her shoulder, and then the warmth of his breath as he leaned close to her to pull the necklace over the front of her neck. “Tell me if it’s too tight.”

The cold ring of metal was pressed by the ribbon into her neck, but ever so gently. Her breath hitched, and made the metal shiver. She felt his deft fingers brushing along the downy hair on the back of her neck – tickling – as he tied the bow, and then the gradual tightening of the ribbon around her neck as he pulled the strings. She made a soft gasp as it began to constrict, and he apologised breathlessly as he loosened it, running a finger beneath it, over the muscles in her throat.

“How is that?” he whispered. His voice was so close to her ear that it made her tremble. “Can you breathe well?” She took a deep breath, partly to demonstrate, and partly to fill the hole that he had made deep in the well of her stomach that made her every thought and muscle flutter. She nodded, and then gasped as she felt his lips beneath her earlobe, and then a hand on her shoulder, still a little cold from the fresh air of the journey. But she did not cringe from it. She snaked a hand back and around his waist as a moan shuddered from her lungs.

“You too have been gone for a long time! I thought I’d have to send a search party! Emma cried, seeing them in the hall. William pulled himself from the embrace, rather flushed.

“We got lost,” William replied.

“And then we found a market!” Victoria was unashamed of their interrupted affections. “A little town, didn’t we? And there were all these shops! And no one at all knew that I was Queen!” She sounded delighted. So delighted that Emma’s heart sunk. She had to say it. There was no avoiding it.

“That sounds wonderful, Ma’am,” she said, slowly. She looked to William, who looked back at her, with the hidden knowledge they shared. He nodded, feebly. That was assent. “I think we must leave now, Ma’am.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Victoria said, shaking her head and grinning. But then she turned to William. And she saw William was not smiling. And she realised. “But why? The sun has not even gone down yet. There is so much I still wish to do! So much I… I wish to say…”

“Ma’am… I am sorry, but we must get back to Buckingham before nightfall,” Emma prompted. Victoria was hardly listening, but scouring William’s eyes for some mercy. It was agony to look on her now. William was sure he would fall apart. Steeling himself, clenching his hands to fists, her said,

“Emma is right, Victoria. It is time.”

Victoria hadn’t the strength to argue with him. But, in a state of complacent shock, she followed Emma to the carriage, hardly breathing, hardly thinking. It was only when Emma had got into the carriage that her senses were regained to her and she ran back to William, throwing her arms around him in earnest, and burying her face in the scratchy wool of his jacket. He was almost knocked back by this, but he remained as sturdy as his agony allowed him, and held her small body close to him. For the last time. He pulled her body away from him after a moment and, stooping to be on the same level as the smaller woman, he said,

“You must try to forget me, Victoria.” There was such pain in his voice! He bled to speak such things.

“William…?” Her expression was one of unreserved shock – near horror. Until now, he had been so accepting, so hopeful, so full of love and promises though he knew they were impossible to keep. But to suddenly cut them all down – and ask of her something impossible. She was too stunned to even weep.

But William knew that he had to say it. Unforgiving age was at his heels and he knew that, before long, he would become captive of his own years, and then be consumed by them. He could not bear to imagine her suffering on his account. She must forget. Move on. Live.

“How can you expect…?” Victoria muttered, too grieved to finish her thought. “What about our other life?” William was not a religious man. Another life seemed doubtful to him, now. But, smiling weakly, his eyes shining with tears that ached to be spilled, he choked,

“Yes. Yes, of course.” A tear escaped him, falling down his cheek, and William gave a sigh, the most awful noise Victoria could imagine. “But, in this life, you must move on.” Victoria shook her head. “Yes.” She shook her head more violently, beginning to sob. “Please, Victoria, promise me.”

“How? How can you ask me?” she sobbed, without restraint. William thought of kissing her again. He wanted to, so much. But, if he did, he was sure he would sob as openly and violently as she was. And he could not do that to her.

“You must go,” he said, guiding her to the carriage. Her footing was unsure, her body hunched and heaving. She allowed him to guide her. If she pushed back, she would faint. She was placed into the carriage by a hand – a familiar hand that had held hers, guided her, brushed hair from her face, helped her onto horses, placed flowers in her hair and touched her naked body – and then the hand was gone. And he was gone. Backing away. And the carriage door was closed. And she could see his lips moving, but had hardly enough sense to hear the words. She thought he said,

“I will miss you. I love you.”

And then she watched, as if this were a dream and she had no control over it, as Brocket Hall was stripped away, and her love was carried along with it. Grey in the face, and handsome, and kind, and wracked with the beginnings of a fit of crying. Red eyes. Hand over his mouth. Shaking. And then there was the countryside, unfamiliar to her.

“Please, stop the carriage! I have changed my mind!” she cried, gripped by an awful, all-consuming panic.

Emma remained silent and stony, not raising her eyes to the sovereign.

“Stop! Stop the carriage! We have to go back! Please!”

Emma was silent. This was a command from her sovereign she could not obey.

Victoria stared from the window, in agony, desperate to see Brocket again. To see him again. Pursuing her. On horseback. Telling her to stop. Telling her to stay. Forever and ever. Always.

She could feel the heat of Buckingham come upon her. Cloying and tight, pouring down her throat in sweaty gulps. Oppressive. Her corset tightened. And, so, she clung to the small tin heart tied around her throat with one hand, and pressed her hand into the cold metal, closer her eyes, and remembered. And William, sat in his armchair at Brocket in the enclosing darkness, gripped the cold glass of the miniature she had bestowed upon him, and held it to his heart, closing his eyes, and remembering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They've said goodbye. But this fic is not over yet... I wonder where Ernest has got to...? ;)


	11. Two Weeks Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been two weeks. Not enough time to repair a broken heart.

Work took William back to London. That was not entirely true: family took William back to London, but family felt like work for William, who was ailing, and desirous of another sort of company than Emily Temple and her husband. It had been two weeks. Not nearly long enough to thread the needle, let alone take the stitches along his heart’s wound, and pull the two pieces back together. He had asked the driver to avoid sight of Buckingham – conscious that the very sight of his broken heart’s dwelling would crack his soul in two, or send him mad, mad enough to break into the gates and risk being shot dead before the doors of the palace in pursuit of her.

It was safer to take the long route, along which Lord Melbourne allowed himself to doze, only to be jolted into waking when he arrived to greet the sight of his beaming sister and her beautiful husband. They had fallen in love when their love was impossible. And now they were married. William felt sick.

But he amused the dashing couple, batting off queries into his health, the grey pallor of his cheeks, the drooping of his dark eyelids, or the languor to his gestures and gait. He dismissed any ill-tidings, and insisted that he was quite well, quite fit, and tolerably happy. He could not claim he was ‘quite happy’; he could not bring himself to. It would be a bare-faced lie and – though a politician’s life had taught him the skill of deceit – he could not lie to his dear sister, not about something so close to his own heart and soul. Emily furrowed at this, sat beside her husband on the sofa, and leaned across her lap to look William more deeply in the eyes. William had always been her favourite sibling (though they hadn’t many to choose from, now, having once been two of eight, reduced to three through sickness, consumption, and premature death). Only Frederick survived, along with his sister Emily and brother William. And Emily preferred William’s gentle countenance over Frederick. And William preferred Emily’s quick, sharp wit over Frederick.

“Tolerably happy, William?” she asked, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear, and feeling the fond press of her husband’s palm on her back. He did that to comfort her. To let her know he’s there. William shrugged in the armchair.

“I expect you miss the Queen, sir,” Lord Palmerston said, in that quiet and deep voice of his that both Emily and William found near irresistible. It was the voice that Emily had fallen in love with, and one that William could imagine falling in love with. Perhaps he had, a little. He spoke so softly that, though his words were daggers, the pain seemed sweet. “It was wicked of them to… well… to force you apart like that.”

“Do you think so?” William asked, raising his brows to look at the younger man, tears shining in his eyes.

“Of course. I know many people who think so. You are one of the Queen’s eldest friends. It seems… it seems rotten.”

“Funny. It was never intended to get out that the whole thing was manufactured. It was supposed to be clean and inconspicuous.”

“Walls have ears, I suppose,” Palmerston said. Emily interjected,

“And courtiers have loose lips!” They laughed a little at this, though the laugh was only half-sincere, and marred with shadows that hung around William like a plague. Emily turned desperately to her husband, who said,

“Well, we all believe it to be a horrid affair. The sympathies lie with you, sir.”

If only he knew how their naked bodies had met: what would he have said then?

“Thank you. Thank you, dearly, Henry,” William replied, reaching over to take his friend’s hand, and pressing it fondly, nodding at him with all due kindness. There was such little reason for joy in company, that William felt utterly moved by this.

Emily could see something changed in her dear, sweet elder brother. When she last saw him, he had light, but that light now seemed all quite blotted away, and what remained was the inky smears, watered-down, where words and life should flow. The silver in his hair was not the flashes of a vigorous age, fearless in years, as lively now as a young man is, but they were the bristles of an old, sad, and lonely man.

Loneliness creeps up on a man like an old friend: one almost forgotten in the mist, but remembered only for leading one into disrepute, taking them to opium dens and gambling rooms and coaxing them into squalor and drunken ruin. Loneliness was a ruffian in gentleman’s clothing. Loneliness did not lead Melbourne into the pub, or the billiards rooms, but to the nunnery. After leaving his sister and the Lord Palmerston, feeling grieved by thoughts of his Queen, he ordered the coachman to take him to Ma Fletcher’s. A familiar place. But a place he had not frequented in years. He had not needed to and, frankly, at his age, the idea of it frightened him. But, as established, loneliness is a dangerously strange bedfellow, and William was distracted.

The exterior was discreet, of course, and the carriage pulled up close to the door, to avoid his being seen. He moved quickly in the darkness of the night.

The door creaked upon his entrance. It was a familiar sound. And then that familiar smell: hitting him like a wall of dank lust and strong perfume and breath. There was a faint creaking noise that made him vaguely uneasy. The darkness was pitch black until his gaze adjusted, and then it was so dim that he could hardly make out the particulars of faces. That was a tactic, he supposed, to disguise even the most unattractive harlots.

“Lord Melbourne, sir.” He was a regular, once upon a time, after Caro’s death, and so Ma Fletcher knew him like some sordid son of hers, even in the lowlight, even now that more grey speckled his hair. “How wonderful to see you, sir. It’s been far too long.” The geniality of her introduction made him squirm. It all seemed to cosy: considering he was only here to indulge an urge, and leave. “Staying the night?”

“Half-an-hour at the most, please,” he replied. He kept things curt and civilised and brief. The embarrassment would be too great, otherwise. And this was not tea and cake at the palace; this was a business transaction, a means to an end.

“Of course, sir.” Ma Fletcher’s pox-marked face sunk back into the dark corners, and Melbourne stood in the centre of the room and waited to be ‘presented’ with the ladies. There was such a thick darkness surrounding him that he shifted from foot to foot, anxious that – at any moment – a hand would reach from the blackness and drag him under. He felt a shiver in his spine, but a heat in his blood.

Then, in the little light that the candles offered, there emerged a line of smiling women. Dressed to show their legs and cleavage, white and plump and flowing. Red paint on their cheeks and lips. Some of them had lost their teeth, and all of them had a glossy look in their eye that made William feel cold. He had some ridiculous urge to _save_ them – but what could he possibly do? Take them away, but then they’d have no money to live. They’d die on the street within a month. The ridiculous heroic urge in him to do something good for someone. He hated the very notion in his brain. He thought for a moment about turning around and leaving, but he stayed, and surveyed.

A smaller woman caught his eye. And her dark hair only tempted him further. He felt wicked: but she would do.

He pointed at her. That was all it took. A shaking finger in her direction, and then the wry flash over her face as she realised she was getting paid tonight. William had some vain hope that she was happy because she sensed he would be kind to her. Or that he would please her in some way. But that was only vanity. As far as she was concerned, he was a customer.

She escorted him upstairs to a small nook of a room, no bigger than a cupboard at the palace, and dingy, thick with the smell of sex. It was sour in his nostrils. There was a thin slit of a window, curtained with dark, thick material that he knew had not been curtains originally – but had been another thing entirely, cut and sewed into shoddy curtains through necessity, not fashion. There was a desk, and a mirror, a bowl of clean-ish water filled to the brim, a small pot of a white chalky substance, a couple of ropes (for the more scandalously minded – as William had been, once), and a locket casket where he assumed the harlot kept her secret belongings. Things men must not see. Things this awful, clasping world must not get their sticky hands on. They can touch her body: but, this, they cannot have. Whether it was a diary, a miniature of a mother lost to them, or simply their money: William could not be sure.

The girl – for William could not be sure whether ‘woman’ would be appropriate for this creature – sat on the bed, and the hinges squealed as she rested her weight on it. She was light and petite; William cringed to think of the sound his body would make, heaving on the wooden frame. He had wanted to be quiet and quick, but that seemed increasingly unlikely. He tried to dismiss the thought, and looked into the girl’s eyes. They were brown. A pretty, dark shade: but they weren’t _right_.

She batted dark eyelashes. He closed his eyes briefly. His breath shuddered.

“What would y’ like me to be called, sir?” Her voice was saccharine, and sad. It lilted and danced in the stale air between them. And she spoke quite loudly. He wanted to shush her. He felt ears in the walls, behind the window. They always asked this. They asked for a name to be given them. Customers had preferences. Fantasies. And William had always chuckled, blushed, and asked them what they wished him to call them. To this, he assumed, they gave a fake name, but he hadn’t a preference and would rather let them decide. They were doing him a favour after all.

But, tonight, he felt shameless, and replied,

“Victoria.”

She grinned at this, and lay back against the headboard as he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. Having said the name, letting it break the air, he had become bold, and excited, and his actions were clumsy and fast. This girl – Victoria, as she was tonight – could see it, and she bit her lip and, as he crawled towards her on the bed, she parted her legs.

_“Oh… ah, Victoria!”_

It was bad of him. He knew that. He felt wretched afterwards. To use her name so wickedly, in a place of such debauchery. To defame her, for the needs of his base lust. But he had done it. He had needed to do it. And so it was done.

He didn’t fear the harlot’s tongue: she knew he had been Prime Minister, and Victoria was the Queen, but – even if she chose to speak out – what proof would she have? And her word could not have stood up against his. She did not seem malicious, neither. In fact, she was a sweet girl. He had tried to be good to her.

He buttoned his waistcoat before the mirror, half-broken and tarnished so he could hardly see his reflection heaving with breath before him. And the girl (no longer Victoria) sat on the bed behind him, playing with her hair, watching him, painted cheeks aglow.

“What’s your name?” William asked – prone to romanticism as he was. The harlot seemed to think for a moment, and replied,

“Tilly.” Her pause meant that William was unsure whether this name was fact or fiction. But, he supposed, it shouldn’t matter to him.

“Are you happy here, Tilly?”

She grinned, again, at this. She had all of her teeth, and they were surprisingly bright. She had a charming smile.

“You were wonderful, m’ Lord!” she laughed, leaning across the bed, and running a hand down his arm.

“No, I didn’t mean me… I meant… are _you_ happy? Here?” he implored, turning from the mirror, kneeling beside the bed, and talking in earnest. She was taken aback by this. She wasn’t paid for this. But there was something kind in this man’s gaze; not all customers had such a kind gaze. He tempted her to speak.

“I ‘ave freedoms that other women c’n only dream of, sir.” At this, William’s chest seized. Oh, what a beautiful thing freedom must be. “I ‘ave money to live on. I ‘ave a warm place to stay at night. And, sometimes, I get to spend my nights with nice gentl’m’n such as y’self.” William could not stop a blush from creeping over his cheeks, though he hated the arrogance which painted it. “Don’t act so surprised, sir. I’m sure all women find you nice, don’t they?”

“I haven’t had the best experience.”

Tilly propped her head to one side and, brazenly, brought a hand to Lord Melbourne’s face, and stroked down his cheek. He did not stop her.

“No,” she muttered, landing her palm flat on his chest. “But s’metimes those who are most deservin’ of love, 'ave the most trouble gettin’ it. But get it they will. One way or another.”

“Don’t you think I’m too old for it, now?”

“Not at all.” She smiled. “I must say, sir, I’ve certainly ‘ad far worse.” William chuckled.

“How very kind of you,” he replied, a flirtatious lilt to his tone. He felt young, again, for a moment. “When I come here, I always feel quite ashamed.” Tilly drew her hand away.

“Oh, how good of you to say, sir!” she cried, mock-offended.

“No! No, not like that! Not at all. Sorry. I shouldn’t have-“

“I’m teasing you!” she drew back from the bed, and staggered to the mirror, where she began to preen herself. “You shouldn’t, though. There’s n’thing to be ashamed of. Not as far as I’m concerned.”

“I should not have called you that name.”

“I’ll never tell if you won’t,” she replied. Tilly was not a fool. She knew that Lord Melbourne had wished her to play the Queen tonight. She was small, her hair was dark, and the Queen’s name was Victoria. One would have to be absolutely dim not to realise. But the former Prime Minister was just as human as anyone else: with messes and shadows.

“Thank you,” William said, standing.

“No, thank _you_. And, not just for the shag, or the money: the talk was nice, too. Though, I don’t get paid for chit-chat, so I’m goin’ to ‘ave to ask you to leave. Unless-“

“No, that’s quite alright.” William collected his things, tidied himself as best he could. 

He grinned, opened the door, and felt the rush of cold. They had made the room hot. It had been fast. Blinding. He shivered.

“Sir?” William turned on his way out, to see Tilly stood beside the slim, thick-glassed window. There was a white light blotted through its lens, and the muffled light fell across her body, and caressed the soft curves of her features, setting her eyes alight. “I do not want to see you back ‘ere.” Her tone was candid. William furrowed his brow.

“Pardon?”

“If you come back ‘ere, again, I know you must be lonely.” She scratched her nails across the back of her own hand, perched on the little desk. “And I don’t want you to be lonely.”

A sigh broke from William’s core.

“You are wise beyond your years.”

“I’ve met a lot of people, sir.”

He nodded, though he could not speak. And he closed the door, listening to the soft click of the latch behind him, and left. The carriage was waiting for him. He slipped inside. The glow of relief still consumed him, but he felt something else. He did not feel cured, or even much happier. But he felt understood, in some strange, paradoxical way. He no longer felt sordid. He no longer felt quite so alone.

But, if anything, his heart longed more fervently than ever for her: for Victoria. Knowing what connection felt like, had made the connection with her all the most special. He missed it all the more. And it was that longing, despite the harlot’s wise words, that showed illness on his face, and in his body, and that was what Emma spied when she next visited William.

Queen Victoria felt that she had been ‘cleft in twain’. One half her, a dutiful Queen, fulfilled her obligations with fervour and precision. In fact, she had never quite worked so ferociously, and to such exacting standards. And, yet, the other half of her – the woman – was grieving. She awoke to cold air, and a lonely bed. Lonely it was, though her husband occupied the other half. But he began to become nothing to her. She ignored him more and more, receding coldly into the throne and the crown. It encircled her, in its metallic curves and glassy jewels, and she bore it bravely. She ate little. She thought of him constantly. Sometimes, she would prepare a piece of paper, and put her pen to ink, and erupt with the first few words of a vehement letter to send to him, before she would counsel herself against it, chastising herself for disobeying William’s final command. To forget. To forget. So, she would burn the words. Burning the words that were so full of passion they seemed to flame already. But she would watch the ink catch on fire, and weep.

Harriet worried for the Queen deeply, knowing all too well the pain of forbidden love.

“Perhaps, Ma’am,” she began, hesitantly, one morning in which they were bound inside due to a bout of spring showers, “it would be nice to leave London. You could go to Scotland, perhaps. Or the Isle of Wight.”

Victoria did not take her eyes from her sewing. Albert had heard the Duchess, however, and replied eagerly,

“I think that is an excellent idea, Victoria. Leaving the city may put your mind at rest.” Albert, of course, had noticed his wife’s distance. And wished for her to recover herself. He was not ignorant as to the reason, but did not wish to confront it. Perhaps, leaving London would remove all those little remembrances that the inanimate objects hold: the seat that he used to sit on in the sitting room, the piano that they sat together beside, the window where they watched the rooks, the painting she had copied whilst engaging in most amiable conversation with him. It would be so healthy for her.

“No. I cannot leave.” Victoria voice was as hard as stone and just as immovable.

“But, Victoria-“

“No, Albert. I cannot. My place is here. My duties are here.”

Lord Melbourne is here, Albert thought.

Emma was not at all surprised that Victoria refused this proposal, but sat silently with her sewing, beside Harriet, and kept her head down as the Prince stared rather furiously at his Queen. Harriet seemed a little distressed at having suggested the idea in the first place, and quickly added,

“Of course, Ma’am. If you do not think it is wise, you are quite right.”

Albert huffed, and left the room at this. Victoria seemed unmoved.

The three ladies continued sewing in silence for a few moments before Victoria dismissed herself, and left the room, as her two ladies continued their sewing. Victoria was just making her way down the corridor, towards her room where she felt the need to lock herself away, when she heard Emma’s voice, hushed.

“She does not want to leave him, I think.”

Victoria stopped dead. And, then, in a morbid curiosity, crept backwards. The Queen stood at the door, her ear to the crack and, holding her breath, she listened.

“And how _is_ Lord Melbourne?” Harriet asked. Just to hear his name produced such a violent reaction in Victoria’s soul that she thought she would cry out, or swoon. Tears pricked her eyes, and she struggled not to let her breathing be heard.

“The Queen must not know this. He is quite insistent.” Emma replied, still quiet. Victoria strained her ears to listen. “But… well, I fear his health is worsening already. The grief… it… it is quite intolerable.”

Victoria failed to suppress a sob, which wracked her diminutive frame, hollowing her body out so she had to cling to the doorframe to keep herself from buckling. She clapped a hand to her mouth, to keep herself from any more cries of grief. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she pressed her eyelids together as a tear broke from each eye.

“Is he dying?”

Oh! Oh! What torturous words! Victoria was sure she would collapse.

“I fear he is.”

She stumbled backwards, staggered by these words that were poison and hellfire to her. Turning without sense, she lurched her way through the winding halls of the palace, her weeping making her blind. She fell into an empty room that – in her distraction – she could not remember the name nor the location of, and she slammed the doors behind her, falling heavily on to a chair, and crying without restraint. Her shuddering body folding in on itself as her face was buried in her hands. The death of her love? She could not bear it. She would sooner die a thousand deaths than have him endure a single one. How could she go on without him? She could not.

He cannot die. He simply cannot.

For him to leave her alone, utterly alone, in this wide and terrifying world. She could not carry on.

Oh, to see him again. What a relief it would give her. To be able to comfort him, that was what she wished. To touch her fingertips to his face, and feel the pulse beneath. To press her forehead against his. To whisper kindnesses into his head. To make him feel better. To kiss him and banish his fear and illness. To breathe the colour back into his cheeks. To make him smile again. To hear his voice. Anything. Anything at all.

She prayed wordlessly, and cried, and cried. And then her tears dried, but her heart still pushed against the bars of her ribcage, and the ensuing pressure hurt her. She wiped her eyes.

“You have been crying.”

She cried out in fright, turning quickly to see her cousin – Ernest – approaching her, a small smile on his face. Not mocking. Kind. She swallowed her tears, and wiped her eyes more quickly, laughing at herself,

“It is just that I am very tired. That is all. I have a lot of work.” She rose to her feet, pulling a wire taut at the top of her frame, so that her spine straightened, and her bones stretched out to their full height. Her face was patchy, red and white, and her eyes were ringed, and bloodshot. Ernest gave her a look that seemed to pass through her skin and out the other side. It made her feel like a ghost. Perhaps he had seen how her heart raged against its confines. Perhaps he knew how it reached for another.

“Why do I not believe you, cousin Victoria?” he said, slowly. He had always been very close to her, and was unafraid of her, despite her throne. Victoria could not lie. She stayed silent. She turned her eyes to her feet. Ernest did not wish to torture his dear cousin Victoria so, calmly, he explained, to put her out of her misery, “I know how you felt about him, Victoria.”

“Who?” she garbled, far too quickly to make herself sound unsuspicious.

“Lord Melbourne.”

“He is a good friend.”

“Victoria-“

“I was very fond of him, yes, of course. He is one of my eldest-“

“I saw you on the balcony.”

Victoria was stunned. She could remember the balcony well. She remembered his kisses. All fervent. All hot. Too hot, too hot. How they had breathed through each other. How they had clung and torn. How they had grappled. How they had moaned.

“Ernest…” she breathed, shaking her head feebly. She was overcome.

“Do not explain yourself, Victoria.” His voice was kind. Victoria hated how kind it sounded. What had she done to deserve his kindness? She had betrayed his blood. She had betrayed his own brother. His younger brother. A man he loved as dearly as his own heart. A man bound to him with rings of steel, soul to soul. “I am not angry with you.”

“But you should be! I have been so…” She should have said ‘cruel’, but her voice could not give life to the word. Because it would be a lie. The meeting of their bodies, of their minds and hearts, had been everything but cruel. Cruelty was not love.

“I do not condone it, I assure you. I do not condone the cuckolding of my brother,” he said, more harshly. Victoria turned red. “But… I, too, know how misplaced love can sting.”

Victoria blinked.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Who is it?”

“I cannot tell you that.” Ernest’s voice was hollow. But he gave a great laugh to mask his unhappiness, and then he began to talk again, “But, therefore, I have decided to help you.”

“Help me?”

“I have a… a plan, of sorts. To make Lord Melbourne my personal assistant.”

Victoria’s brain whirred and swirled with this mass of information, all confusing and new and exciting. She felt light-headed.

“Your… assistant?”

“If I were to secure an English match, it may prove a fruitful union for your country. But, of course, I would need a native to guide my courtship.”

“An English match?”

“It could be very popular: an English noblewoman on the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg.”

“Will it be her? The one upon whom your love has been misplaced?” she asked, wistfully, passionately. Ernest chuckled. But his chuckle was sour.

“No. Not her. That cannot be.” Victoria closed her mouth, and blushed again. “But I am sure to find someone. With his guidance. And, once I have found my bride, he will assist me in matters of English conduct, and so on.”

“But you are very well informed on English conduct, Ernest.”

“Well, yes, but – as I said – this is a ploy to keep Lord Melbourne in your company.”

“Oh. Yes.” Victoria smiled, fresh tears in her eyes.

“But, Victoria, listen to me.” Her smile faded. “We must understand each other. This ploy will keep Lord Melbourne in your company, and often in the palace. He will attend your balls and dinners as my guest, and therefore you can engage in all the conversation that you wish, as cordial friends. But,” he said, his tone severe, “I will not be an accomplice in your affair. Just as I cannot have, in body, my heart’s desire, you must not engage with him physically again. You have him as a friend for as long as you wish. But that must be all. That is my end of the bargain. Do you understand me, Victoria?”

Victoria could not be disappointed at this. For a friend, a good and honest and kind friend, was better than nothing at all. They had been unaffected friends for years, without even touching beyond a kiss of the hand, and it had been the most blissful time of her life! Oh, this was not a punishment at all! This was joy!

“Yes! Yes, I understand! Oh, Ernest!” Victoria threw herself with abandon into her cousin’s arms, and bound him tightly in her embrace until she was sure she could suffocate him. He laughed in her ear, and the laugh was beautiful. “You are wonderful!” She drew back, and looked him in the eye. “Do you think it will work? Do you think you can persuade Albert? And Leopold?”

“I can certainly try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Ernest. What are you like?
> 
> As always, your comments and thoughts are invaluable - so do take the time to write something! x


	12. Three Weeks Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ernest's plan takes action.

There were two firm and decisive raps – irrevocable in sound – and Hunter, obediently, made his way to the door, slightly concerned as to who could possibly have come all the way to Brocket at this time of day on any day, only to be interjected by his master’s bark,

“Hunter! I’m not in! Not to anyone.”

“Of course, sir.”

Lord Melbourne was in his dressing gown. Hunter could not recall the last time he had dressed himself: he had only done so to go outside a couple of times, but the rest of the hours he spent enveloped in his golden dressing gown, drinking. And Lord Melbourne was doing just that, today. In the study, Hunter could spot a bottle and a glass, and (though he rarely exhibited the slovenly signs of drunkenness, Hunter knew his master well enough to note the little slurs and stagger of alcohol-consumption. He did not prepare for guests, neither did he want them, but stewed in remembrance of the Queen.

So, Hunter prepared himself to turn away a guest. He half-expected Lady Portman, but she surely would not knock quite so loudly, unless it were an emergency. It could have been any number of old political ‘friends’, come to check up on him in his old age in that morbid gloating stage. Getting one over on a man who would have shamed them in the chamber a few years back. Clouding their scornful laughs with kindnesses. Whoever it was, they must be turned away.

The door was opened only a crack, and a hostile face peered around, and Ernest smiled gleefully to greet the manservant. Hunter was taken aback for a moment. Of all the people he had expected to see, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the last name in his mind.

“Good morning. Is Lord Melbourne in?”

“Uh-“ His brain was working slower than his motor functions, and his face gave way to the gravity of his lie, “No, sir. He is indisposed.”

“Tell him it is important.”

“I’m afraid he can’t take guests, sir.”

“Tell him the Duke of Saxe-Coburg wants to talk to him.”

“But-“

“Tell him, please.”

Lord Melbourne was told, and the expression of shock on his face frightened Hunter – knowing of Lord Melbourne’s ill health. But, in an instant, he seemed quite collected, much like the gentleman that he once was, and he pulled himself straighter in his chair and replied,

“Show him in.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Hunter asked, surrounded by the disarray of Melbourne’s house and his person. Melbourne began to slip the dressing gown from his arms.

“Quite certain. He has come all this way, after all. It would be rude to turn him away.”

Ernest was shown in, and when he entered the library, Lord Melbourne was stood to greet him, dressed in his shirt, his hair a little ruffled, and looking slightly weak, but as genial as he could possibly expect, knowing the man’s unfortunate situation. Ernest was shown to a seat, which he took gratefully, and Lord Melbourne sat opposite him, awaiting his speech, patiently, but avidly.

“You are reading Hamlet, sir?” Ernest was gesturing to a pocket-sized, red-covered edition rested on the low table beside his armchair, face-down, and open, to save a page. Melbourne looked at where Ernest’s eyes rested, and smiled,

“Ah, yes. I find it therapeutic.”

“Revenge and death?” laughed Ernest.

“Well. I’ve never been the most optimistic soul, sir,” Melbourne replied, with more than a hint of self-deprecation in his voice. “But there is something undeniably… comforting about Hamlet. He is capable of such profundity. It is healthy to remember one’s unimportance sometimes, isn’t it? A quintessence of dust, and all that.”

“You seem melancholic, Lord Melbourne.”

“Perhaps,” he chuckled, though not happily.

“Then, you may not like my coming, Lord Melbourne,” Ernest laughed, sitting forward on his chair. Melbourne responded to the jovial tone with a cry of,

“Why ever not, sir?”

“I bring omens.”

“Ah! We defy augury!” Melbourne laughed, seeing the Duke’s reference, “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. Well, a Prime Minister, rather.”

“Perhaps this is providence, then, my visiting you.”

“I hope not! This visit better not bring on my downfall!” his laughter turned to coughs.

“No, no,” Ernest grinned, once the coughing had worn off, “In fact, think of this as your ascendancy! I have come here to make a deal with you.”

“A… a deal?” Melbourne’s voice had taken on a tone of staggered disbelief, though Ernest hadn’t yet said a single word in reference to this ‘ascendancy deal’. What sort of ascendancy could Melbourne wish for now, an old man as he was? He hadn’t hoped for any form of ascending, but a slow decline into illness and the ground. Hamlet had forced him to come to terms with that. “Is that why you have come all this way? What sort of ‘deal’?”

“I am looking for a wife, Lord Melbourne!” he sighed, almost triumphantly, as if this fact required applause and commendation. William raised his eyebrows and knotted his fingers in front of his chest. “And I know how well you understand the English court, the English manner, the English ladies… and I would be grateful – and, indeed, honoured – if you would assist me in my courtship.”

Melbourne blinked.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I’m confused as to why you would choose me. Surely Lord Alfred Paget would assist you? Or-?”

“I have decided that I want no one but you by my side.”

“You seem insistent.”

“I am.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I know how much it hurts,” Ernest said, without a moment’s pause, catching Lord Melbourne off-guard, so he spluttered, and looked to the Duke with such a look of confounded horror that Ernest thought he had spoken too rashly. He calmed to explain, “To love where it is impossible to love.” His expression did not weaken in its horror, but persisted.

“What?”

Ernest gave his gentlest smile, before replying, softly,

“You are quite in love with my cousin, aren’t you?”

“I… sir, you must understand-“

“I saw you on the balcony. Cousin Victoria has practically admitted to it. There’s no need to deceive me, Lord Melbourne.”

“You…” Melbourne began, his brain seemingly without enough oxygen to compute his reply, “You have taken pity?” He spoke as a child speaks: that muted disbelief that paints the picture of one whose naivety makes all things fantastical, whose mild shock comes from the notion of kindnesses never being theirs.

“You can see each other, of course, under my supervision. But nothing occurs beyond that, Lord Melbourne. I don’t think I have to explain to you the dangers of a physical closeness between you and the Queen.”

“No, sir, of course.”

“Good. So, you are in agreement?”

“Do you have Prince Albert’s permission?”

“I am yet to seek it, but I will. It is tedious having to seek my little brother’s approval in these matters, but I guess I must. I will persuade him, don’t worry.”

Melbourne gave an uneasy nod: he was unsure of how easy it would be to persuade the Prince. He had seen the way Albert looked at him.

“Are you in agreement, in theory, Lord Melbourne?” Ernest repeated, holding out a hand to the older man who, taking the hand and shaking it with a newfound vigour, replied,

“Absolutely.”

Albert bit his lip as if wishing to tear it free of his face and eat it. Leopold stood behind him, deep in contemplative thought. Ernest sat before them both, panting a little from the exertion of explanation.

“Why him, Ernest?” Albert asked, “You have your pick of any gentleman in the English court, any young, ambitious gentleman you like, and you pick the man that we have only just persuaded to leave the household!”

“I am fed up of young and ambitious men, brother, dearest. I need a man who is experienced, wise, unaffected.”

“Unaffected!” Albert threw his hands up in despair.

“I have chosen Lord Melbourne,” Ernest pronounced, “and he is in agreement.”

“Well, of course he is! He’ll take this as an opportunity to exert his influence all over again! We will open the door wide open to him, again! To torment us!”

“No, Albert, your brother is being quite wise.”

“Uncle…?”

“An English marriage may be very prosperous for the Coburgs,” Leopold crooned, that sly sparkle in one eye that becomes him when the cards of ambition are laid out on the table. “Do you think that the Lord Melbourne would be the best assistant to you in this, Ernest?”

“I am convinced, uncle,” said Ernest, with his best and brightest smile, turning the charm up to its fullest. “In fact, I think if I were not to have a man so knowledgeable and patient, I may not be successful in my endeavours at all.”

Albert saw straight through Ernest’s lies. He was his brother, after all. But Leopold was quite taken in: subsumed by the story and his own blind ambition.

“If you are quite sure, Ernest…”

“Uncle!”

“We have nothing to fear from a connection between Ernest and Lord Melbourne, Albert. There is no need for Victoria to be tied up in all this. It will do no harm to our little plan,” Leopold explained. Ernest nodded appreciatively,

“Of course! Victoria is nothing to do with this.”

“But, don’t you see? He will attend balls, dinners, events! It will be just like inviting him into the Queen’s company all over again, so he can assert his influence just as he used to!”

“But not over the Queen.”

“But he will! She will be taken in!”

“Now you’re sounding insecure, Albert.” Leopold turned to his nephew with a cold glare that silenced him, as if he were a schoolboy now under scrutiny of his headmaster. Leopold patted his older nephew on the shoulder, like a proud father after his son has won a prize, and puffed his chest out in victorious pride and announced, “It will be no trouble, of course, for a Coburg like you to charm yourself an English lady! But, if you think Lord Melbourne will be the best person to aid you, then you must employ him!”

Ernest’s face glowed. Albert watched it, and turned cold.

Ernest did not wait to tell his cousin, who practically shrieked with delight, and wound him in her arms, spilling endless words of thanks into his ears, and throwing kisses about his face. She was going to see her love again. She would talk to him again. She would hold his hand again. She would see him smile again.

“We must have a ball, soon! There must be an opportunity for you to meet all of your possible wives!” Victoria cried, rummaging through her papers for sight of her dairy.

“And, of course, an opportunity for you to see Lord Melbourne again,” Ernest said, wryly, smiling cheekily at her. She pursed her lips and turned bright red. Unashamed, she replied,

“Why, of course!”

The ball was organised for the next evening Victoria was free – the following week – and she was practically trembling with excitement for every hour leading to it. Lord Melbourne, too, could hardly control his sense of anticipation. He had rejoiced in hearing the news that he would be accepted as the Duke’s assistant, and had almost wept when he received the invitation to the ball. He ran shaking hands along the words, tracing her name again and again: his fingers did not shake through illness, as his health had returned to him almost miraculously. His fingers trembled with an emotion that kept him awake at night. But then the night had come. And his heart felt as if it were flaming, and his chest heaved beneath the gold of his waistcoat.

Meanwhile, Victoria stood before the mirror as Skerrett tugged at the strings of her corset with all her strength. Victoria grimaced.

“Can’t you pull it tighter, Miss Skerrett?” she panted.

“With all due respect, Ma’am, you must have room to breathe.”

Victoria stood up, and felt the press of the material around her stomach. She nodded,

“Yes, I suppose you are right.” Skerrett helped Victoria into her dress: gold, and fine. “I just want to look beautiful tonight,” Victoria sighed once the dress had been fastened. She was brushing her hands critically over the folds of the skirt.

“I think you look very beautiful, your Majesty,” Skerrett replied, honestly. Victoria smiled,

“Do you think so?”

Skerrett nodded.

Victoria raised her chin, studied herself in the mirror, and imagined how Lord Melbourne would look tonight.

Oh, even the thought was heavenly.

But, why think? When one can witness. Victoria almost ran into the ballroom, where the doors were opened and, without the need to even search, or lay her eyes on the face of another, her gaze settled on her dear Lord M.

He was breathless.

They’re eyes spoke a thousand whispers. Their lips opened in gasps. Their souls flew. And their bodies numbed.

Neither thought they would witness a miracle such as this again.

Harriet Sutherland, intoxicated on the heady scent of affection that had bloomed into the air, and burned in the flames of candles, approached Ernest, who was stood silently, watching the dancers, in deep, pensive thought.

“I have been informed that you have made Lord Melbourne your personal assistant,” Harriet said, taking a sip of champagne as she looked across the rows of dancers towards the man in question, who was gazing fondly at the Queen, who was – in turn – gazing fondly at the ground in flushed embarrassment at being gazed at with such ardour. Harriet, herself, blushed to see this bashful meeting of lovers. Harriet was more glad than she could say. To see these two hearts brought together under such impossibilities; it was more than she could have hoped for. She knew how happy the Queen was made by his company, and it filled her with a warm glow of satisfaction.

She hoped, with all her heart, that she too would one day join in their happiness.

“Yes,” Ernest replied, surprisingly curt. Harriet turned to him, a look of bewilderment making her features harsh for a moment, before she softened them, and said,

“Well, what is it that he is assisting you in?” Her voice was light as a white feather, but for Ernest it was heavy as lead, and it pressed in the centre of his chest. When he replied, his tone was rushed and hard. It was careless of him – to speak so coarsely to such a woman as her, but he had needed to throw the lead from his chest, and so he did so quickly,

“I am looking for a bride.”

“Oh,” was all Harriet could muster. She turned her face to the ground – but not for blushing – for the tears that rose in her face and made her lip quiver. For a moment she was blinded by the water behind her eyelids, then she clenched her jaw and said, in a tone quite composed enough for a lady, “I suppose it is about time. An English match, then?”

“An English match would be… preferable,” Ernest said, his voice strained with the feeling that raged beneath his skin. Harriet almost gave way to weeping at the cruelty of his words: though she knew it would never mean them to be as cruel as they were.

“There is a wealth of young, available ladies for you, sir!” she laughed, gesturing to the lines of pretty, rainbow-paper wrapped women who now danced before them, like peacocks, and waving her hand at them to distract from her frame, which was falling apart. “Lord Melbourne will be the most excellent tutor.” Harriet understood that Lord Melbourne was only chosen so that he could remain in the Queen’s company.

How could he be so generous to the hearts of others, and yet deny theirs so harshly?

Harriet was correct, Ernest reflected later in the evening, when Lord Melbourne was introducing him to a great many young ladies, all of them but shadows in comparison to Harriet, and all of them batting their eyelashes fiercely in the hopes that the handsome Duke of Saxe-Coburg would choose their eyelashes over the eyelashes of another. He saw so many eyelashes in such a short amount of time that he could no longer attach eyelashes to names, or names to eyelashes.

“Who do you recommend, Lord Melbourne?” Ernest asked, interrupting the older man as he went through the various pros and cons of the different ladies that seemed all the same to Ernest, but William had lived long enough and known enough of them to differentiate every individual lash.

“Oh… well, sir… it isn’t my place to say… uh, it is your marriage after all.”

“But who do you recommend most highly?” Ernest insisted. Lord Melbourne turned the corners of his mouth down and raised his eyelids. He knew very well that what he would choose in a wife was far different to what the Duke would choose, but it was almost impossible for him to put himself in the shoes of someone so young and _vigorous_.

“Well, sir, I have always found Miss Wood quite-“

“Yes, she’ll do.”

“Pardon?”

“Which one was she again?”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but if you are choosing yourself a bride, I must insist that you at least reflect on the lady in question before rushing into things!”

“Remind me who she is, and I will talk to her. If I find her tolerable, then we will be married.”

“Tolerable?” William chuckled, keeping his voice low. Ernest glared at him, almost sadly,

“Please, do remind me.”

Lord Melbourne’s face fell flat, and he gestured vaguely in the direction of Miss Blanche Edith Wood, who was stood at the side of the ballroom, in animated conversation with her father, smiling very prettily, and wearing a pale blue dress of taffeta that was pulled very snugly around her slim waist. She was quite the picture of beauty, Lord Melbourne thought, and he hoped to God that Ernest would treat her with kindness.

William watched as Ernest approached the young lady, and offered his hand, which she took, an expression of reserved delight on her face. She turned to her father, who nodded, and the two engaged in a dance together, and then another dance and, before the end of the night, it seemed quite settled that they were to be engaged sooner rather than later. And, to this, lovely Miss Wood was giddy, and Ernest was resolved.

“Lord Melbourne.” The voice turned him around in a moment. A smirk was on her lips, and a sparkle in the corner of her eye, and a tilt of the head.

“Ma’am.” He was smirking, too.

“How good it is to see you here.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Ma’am.”

Victoria had tears in her eyes. William could have kissed them away, were they alone, and were it allowed.

“You seem to have made quick work of matchmaking,” Victoria said, turning towards the couple, who were talking now at the side of the ballroom.

“He seems to be in a rush. He speaks of picking a bride as it is it picking out cufflinks!” Melbourne laughed, shaking his head. Victoria shrugged,

“He says his heart is engaged somewhere else.” William furrowed his brow,

“Where? I mean, to whom?”

“He would not tell me. Poor dove.”

William’s face creased. He had seen the Duchess of Sutherland and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg talking earlier in the evening, and they had seemed so distracted since – no, no, it could not be her. The Duchess of Sutherland was no place for a forbidden affection, he told himself, despite the prompting of his conscience telling him otherwise.

“I hope he does not break her heart. Miss Wood is a sweet girl,” said Melbourne, bitterly, half to himself. “But I suppose it is difficult to be faithful, when one’s soul is betrothed to another.”

“Yes,” Victoria replied, with a knowing look, “Almost impossible.” She, then, began to laugh, and William laughed too. And they laughed together for a moment, without a single care in the world. To be together, now, was more than enough, when they had resigned themselves to eternal loneliness. “Oh! I missed you more than anything!” she cried, unable to stop herself from taking his hand and holding it tightly between her palms. He smiled down at her, in a way no one else smiled, and said,

“Two weeks felt like a lifetime, Ma’am.”

“Oh, I am so happy!” she wept, a great smile bursting through her face: real and wide and unrestrained. William took a step closer to her and, taking advantage of the swell of the music, lowered his voice to say,

“My only regret is that I cannot kiss you, now.”

Victoria’s stomach clenched, and a gasp was sucked through her teeth. She glanced up, and his green eyes had been set alight. Oh, he was perfect! She could remember the touch of his wandering hands.

“Here, come,” Victoria said, a little shaken, turning and beginning to talk towards a sofa at the edge of the ballroom, where the light was lower and the company was scarcer, “We have so much to talk about!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, as always, and do let me know what you think! x


	13. Months Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wedding and a deal broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little cross-promo. Those of you who follow Rufus' other work may know of a Tom Stoppard play called 'Arcadia'. I wrote a little fic recently about Arcadia, so you might want to check it out:
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/12459849
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy this chapter, and do let me know what you think.

The wedding was the first week in June. A summer wedding was just the time for a wedding of so young and attractive a couple – though, truth be told, only one side of the couple was swept up in summery delight at the prospect of the marriage. But Ernest was excellent at faking it – and so that was enough.

Of course, not being British nobility, the marriage could not take place at Westminster Abbey – so the Chapel Royal at St James’ Palace was thought to be the most appropriate place. And, indeed, Miss Wood was delighted with it. The puritanical windows and high-reaching wooden panelling looked like something swiped directly from a romance novel, and she indulged herself with the thought of still being able to hear the gentle tap of water drops over the childish head of the future Charles II. Miss Wood was becoming the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and was gaining a handsome husband in the process, a fact which thrilled her more than the title.

But the austere Protestantism of the backdrop was nothing compared to the beauty of the couple themselves: Ernest, in his brash uniform, and his wife, dark-haired, glowing, shrouded in white.

“You have done a very good job, Lord Melbourne.”

Turning swiftly away from the happy couple, William saw the two teasing eyes of Emma Portman. He grinned,

“Yes, well. I hope so. Miss Wood – the Duchess, rather – is a very sweet girl. I do hope she is made happy.”

Emma knew very well, careful observance being her forte, of the love shared between the Duke and the Duchess of Sutherland. She bit her lip uneasily, and changed the subject.

“It is quite delightful, I must say, William, to have you back in the royal household.”

“The delight is all mine.” He blushed.

“I am sure it is,” Emma muttered, pressing her hand against William’s in an expression of love and support which breathed warmth into his bones, before turning her head to look where William’s gaze now lay, and she smiled to see that he was looking at her, still, and that she was glancing around at him whenever possible.

The royal household returned to Buckingham, and the wedding feast was consumed happily in those halls. There were copious amounts of food – more food than the gathering, though dozens they were, could have ever consumed in the few hours they were allowed. But they enjoyed what they could reasonably consume, and enjoyed more the company. Chatting and laughing, Victoria took a while to realise that a certain member of her household was not present – but had slipped away to the side where it was shadowy.

“Harriet?” she asked, leaving the group behind her, and retreating into the shadows where Harriet dwelled. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Oh! It is nothing, Ma’am… honestly.” Though Harriet’s tone – fraught and tearful – made her lies translucent, and her face, crumbling into the lines of grief, left Victoria in no doubt that her heart was breaking.

“Harriet?” Victoria whispered, holding her dear friend’s shoulder. At this, Harriet began to cry, softly at first, then more strained as she tried to stifle the sobs. Victoria, acting quickly, hurried Harriet from the room to protect her modesty, moving as subtly as the movements of a monarch could possibly be, and closed the door to an adjacent room and sat the crying lady down.

“I am being so silly, Ma’am…” Harriet swallowed the truth down her throat until it got lost in her twisting stomach, “I am just thinking about my children, that is all. I see so little of them after they get married.”

Victoria was not entirely convinced by the Duchess’ words, but had not the courage to challenge her whilst she cried, so she cooed and reassured the woman, holding her hands, and kissing them.

“You are very kind, Ma’am,” Harriet sniffed, drying her tears on a handkerchief given to her by her Majesty. “It isn’t right of me to greet such joy with tears. It is so lovely to see a wedding, isn’t it? I am sure they will both be very happy.”

The honeymoon period of the marriage ended, as it is always destined to do, and the matrimonial harmony slowed into domesticity, and the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha found herself quite often alone, with her husband only a picture in her mind’s eye. Contentedly, she took to wifely duties as she understood them, spending hours beside windows, like a captive bird, watching the shifting shadows of breeze-waved leaves, or catching the eyes of free songbirds that twitch from branch to branch and sometimes land very close to the glass so that she could see the ruffle of the little creature’s feathers, rising and falling quickly with breath. The sun would glint in the blackness. When the bird flew away, she would read, picking thin books from the bookcase, and browsing through them. When her eyes grew tired, she would brush her hair before a mirror and collect the strands which she pulled free.

But, one late morning, she was sat near the window with sewing – another activity she thought appropriate to undertake, and she did not at all expect to be disturbed.

“Where is your husband, Duchess?”

Turning her head up from her sewing into a little pool of summer sunshine fading through the window, the Duchess squinted, and saw Prince Albert entering the room. She stood for the Prince, curtsying, but he bashfully dismissed her, and she sat back down, replying, softly,

“I do not know, sir.”

Albert stopped at this, and looked down to the figure of a woman sat alone on the sofa, holding her sewing between pale fingers, her tired eyes in a state of complacent easiness. Her smile was dim, but submissive.

“You do not know?” he asked. His tone, however, was not confrontational – or intended to bring shame to the newlywed, but was given in a tone of genuine inquiry.

“Well, he has been away quite often,” she replied, so simply.

“And you do not inquire to where he is going?” Albert sat down at this, a good distance from the young woman, but close enough to show his concern. She laughed a little – silvery – and crossed her hands across her lap as she smiled,

“I do not feel it is my place to ask, sir.” Albert sat back, and looked inquisitively at this picture of young womanhood: so concealed, constrained against nature, preened to only a sliver of the woman he imagined raging beneath the corset. “You do not think I should be concerned?”

“No! No,” Albert replied, quickly, “I assure you. You have no reason to fear.”

The Duchess seemed moved at this, for a moment, then she spoke, delicately,

“Where is the Queen, sir?”

Albert chuckled,

“I do not know!” He tapped his thigh. “It seems we are in the same situation. I see so little of her now.” Albert, strangely unguarded, let loose a sign of his discontent which struck a chord of the Duchess’ heartstrings and, quite unthinkingly, she asked,

“Do you worry for her?” Her tone was all honestly.

“Worry for her?” Albert repeated. What could she possibly be implying? There was something intelligent in her gaze; Albert noticed. Then, seeing that he wouldn’t reply, she leaned forward almost imperceptibly, and asked,

“Are you happy, Prince Albert?”

Albert’s furrowed brow collected shadows, but when he turned to the Duchess, the pool of light that so irradiated her features fell on him, and his face fell open and he succumbed to an honesty which gave him courage to say,

“Not entirely.”

He did not need to return the question, for the light pooling in the water in her eyes gave him all the answer he needed. He felt ashamed of his brother, for leaving his new wife so bereft of his company – and so undeservingly! He could not have imagined what he was doing, and what kept him from his wife’s side. Ernest had always had a mind of his own – liable to unexpected endeavour. Often things that Albert thought unthinkable, he would imagine as easily as anything.

He was not as prone to wild imagination as Ernest was. Though, now, he could not deny a roving mind – not simply into the matters of Ernest’s heart but into the beating of his own.

Miss Wood, too, could not hide from herself a wandering heart, and as the days turned to weeks, and her husband grew ever distant, she began to feel the tightening of a cord across her form, pulling her inwards, and repressing her into strict silence. Suspicions – like bandits – roved into her mind and made her uneasy. The late nights, the secrets, the lack of conversation, the lack of him, and then – finally – the discovery of something so upsetting to her very nature that she was forced to seek assistance.

“Lord Melbourne!”

The gentleman in question was just taking his leave of the palace, having arrived to call on the Duke on a small matter of his wife’s second cousin’s child being christened, but – being informed that the Duke was not in residence – he had decided to go to visit the National Gallery, perhaps, or to take a walk about Kensington Gardens, or to indulge himself in another form of summertime recreation that only a genial heart can take pleasure in. But, hearing a cry of his name, he stopped, and turned, and saw the figure of the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha standing in the corridor, in a state of some distress. His chest filled with dread.

“Duchess? Are you quite well?” he asked.

“Please, sir, could I… could I talk to you… in private?” She knew very well that asking for such a thing was highly inappropriate, but she felt she could do nothing else. And Lord Melbourne, always more appreciative of the individual than the society, nodded, assented more than willingly, and guided her into a side room, where he sat down with her, and waited whilst she sat in meditative though (looking like the thoughtful saints of the church, often haloed in gold leaf, and wound up in white smocks and scarves) for her to finally pluck up the courage and the information to speak,

“Lord Melbourne, please, forgive me for my impudence, but I know that I can trust you.”

“I am flattered that you feel that way,” chuckled Lord M, turning somewhat red. The Duchess, too, laughed, at the man’s reaction, but her smile faded almost as quickly as it had emerged, and she said, quite earnestly,

“And I felt I must seek your counsel as to my husband, for you know the Duke’s behaviour better than anyone.”

“Well, my lady, I do not know whether that is entirely true, but if you require my help and if there is any way I can be of assistance, I will gladly do so.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, gratefully, “It is… I do not think ill of my husband. I would rather die than accuse him of treachery where it is not due! But, well… I am afeared that he is not entirely honest with me. Do not believe that I wish to slander him! It is the last thing on the earth I wish to do! But I cannot help but feel it. I feel wretched. Do you know whether the Duke is… faithful?”

William was chewing on the tongue inside his mouth as sweet Miss Wood – now the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha – spoke, feeling himself become filled with a fiery fury that could have burst forth in wild exclamations, were he any other man. But Lord Melbourne was, in all things, tactful, and did not wish to grieve the poor lady any further than was necessary.

“What is it, particularly, that has given you reason for concern?” he asked, in a moderated tone. Miss Wood, at this, became suddenly very bashful, and shook her head as she cried,

“Oh! You must think me so silly. I am being paranoid!”

“No,” replied Lord Melbourne, firmly, but with a tone of paternal gentility that soothed the Duchess’ fraught nerves, and lullabied her into an easy fondness. “No, I do not think that at all. Just tell me everything you know.”

The Duchess lowered her voice, and leaned into the conversation, afraid of the delicate tone of their topic. She had never talked of the bedchamber with another soul, save that of her husband.

“He does not always come to bed at night,” she whispered, flushing pink at the intimacy of this, but he cleared her throat and continued, “And sometimes he will come to bed in the early hours of the morning, and wake me up. I can smell an unfamiliar perfume on him.”

“Ah,” Lord Melbourne replied.

“And I have found a lock of brown hair. He keeps it in a cabinet.”

“Does he, now?”

“Yes,” cried the Duchess, hanging her head in mortification at the lot of being an abandoned wife. What must he think of her! To be shoved aside so soon after their matrimony! “Oh, it is a shameful thing.”

“It is not you who has reason to feel shame, Miss Wood, I promise you.” He could not refrain from using her maiden name. “You say the hair was dark…”

“Yes, dark brown.”

“I see. Do you have any suspicions as to who it could belong to?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea! It could be a mother, for all I know! I do not want to assume that he is unfaithful!”

“Of course not. Thank you for telling me, Duchess. I am afraid I can shed no light on this. But I will make inquiries. If I find anything, you will be the first to know.”

“Oh, thank you! You are very kind!”

Lord Melbourne tasted something bitter in his mouth. She should not be on the receiving end of such kindness – for this situation should never have occurred in the first place. He was only dealing her kindness, now, as he had been wicked in choosing her for this persecution.

As soon as Lord Melbourne could arrange an audience with the Queen, he decided to tell her. He asked the Queen to arrange a private audience – somewhere secluded in the palace, and quiet, so that they would not be overheard or disturbed. This prospect excited Victoria a little – but as soon as she saw Melbourne’s sombre expression, her excitement dwindled as a candle burns out when the wax has diminished. Lord Melbourne took a long time to speak and, whilst waiting, she could not keep herself from thinking terrible thoughts: all manner of scenarios which would end their acquaintance, or end his life, or hers. Finally, however, he spoke, with great pain,

“I have reason to believe, Ma’am, that your cousin is having an affair.”

“With Harriet?” Victoria cried, suddenly, astounded. Then, like the opening of flood gates, evidence streamed into her mind, ice cold, and everything became as clear and crystal to her as the sight before her eyes, and the knowledge of her throne. William, however, had not before seen this clearly, and he gawped for a moment like a beached fish, before replying,

“I had not suspected the Duchess of Sutherland…”

“Oh.”

“Do you believe it is her?”

“Well. I don’t know.”

“Why did you say so?”

“Oh, it is nothing.”

“Your Majesty?”

“She was just so upset at the wedding. I thought…”

“You believe that she is the one engaged in an affair with the Duke?”

“I would never think ill of Harriet… but…”

“But you believe it is true?”

“I… I would not be surprised.”

“Oh, God!” cried Lord M, suddenly, with a fervour that was out-of-character for the usually urbane gentleman. He paced, almost distraught, slapping his thigh as he moved in a state of near-madness.

“Lord M?” Victoria was frightened by this sudden outburst of emotion, but wished to rid him of its toils.

“It is wicked, what he has done!” shouted William, quite forgetting himself, “And I have assisted him in it! God, I feel wretched!” He stopped pacing and stood beside the window, crippled by a torment that would not show itself to her in words, but made itself evident in his body, which seemed to tremble with emotion.

“No, William, you are not guilty in this,” Victoria implored, leaning forward on her seat, and stretching a hand in his direction.

“Like a juror, I have subjected Miss Wood – who was so innocent – to the humiliating position of wife to a licentious man!”

“William!” Victoria cried violently, rising to her feet. Her cry brought William cascading back into himself. He hung his head shamefully at the anger that had raged in him.

“I am sorry, your Majesty.” He was beginning to calm. The effects of embarrassment on a tormented mind: a wildfire in doused to a puny whiff of smoke. Victoria, too, calmed herself to say,

“I think… I think Ernest is genuinely _in love_ with Harriet.” At this, Lord M sighed, but Victoria persisted, “And, just as we would want mercy in the consummation of our love, we must give them the same.”

“I remember when you believed adultery was wrong,” Lord M observed, unaffectedly.

“Oh, lord!” Victoria cried, throwing herself back down on to the sofa once more, and burying her head in her hands before sighing, “I do not know how I feel anymore.” She lifted her head and cupped her chin with her two hands, staring blankly at the fire raging in the fireplace. “He said he would not give his body to the captor of his heart. He promised he would not, as long as we did not engage physically with one another. He has broken his end of the deal.”

“No…” William muttered, realising upon what the Queen’s young mind was very quickly fixing, “No, Victoria… that would be madness. To have the… the English court become a place of… of corruption and adultery, to deceive the Prince and the Duchess, and to commit secret acts… it is too dangerous.”

“We will keep it a secret. We can ask Ernest to assist us in keeping Albert unawares, and you can do the same to Miss Wood-“

“That is unfair on them!”

“It is unfair on us to be slaves to a bargain that has already been broken!”

“Everything must return to normal… we must-“

“How long did you think we could _last?_ ” Victoria shouted, unafraid of being overheard. Melbourne fell silent, staggered by her sudden cry. To hear her voice so fraught made his heart ache. “Did you think we would be able to see each other, pass a few kind words, and then carry on as if nothing else had ever been? Did you think we could just forget how we had touched? How we had sighed? You may be able to forget that, William, but I never can. I thought I would be perfectly happy with only your company – the way it used to be – but now that I have seen heaven, I cannot go back to base earth! It would be to ask me to stop breathing!”

She sat, breathing heavily, her face red from lack of breath, and watched as William moved like a ghost to a chair, and sat himself on it. The sound of the clock ticking did nothing to convince them that it had only been minutes that passed – rather than what it felt like: weeks.

William knew that he was a fool. He could hear Emma laughing at him. He could feel the heartbeat of his younger self: a malcontent, unhappy in youth, unhappy with the world and himself, but yearning for the validating glow of love, affection, sex. Whatever it would be, he craved it. Every stage of his life, at that very moment, screamed at him to accept. If joy had always been unknown to him, he could take it now.

For she was joy, indeed.

“I have made a great habit of lying to myself, Victoria. You should know that by now.”

Victoria’s voice had barely strength enough to be heard as she muttered,

“Do you-?”

“I agree with you. In all things.” Victoria’s breath caught in her throat. “I cannot carry on like this forever. I want to…” He could say no more. He hadn’t the courage to.

“Tell me,” Victoria exhaled, her eyes turning dark as they studied him. Her fingers bunched around her skirts and William watched her hands in a sort of trance as the knuckles whitened. “Tell me what you want to do.” Her pupils implored him, and the breath that slipped through the gap between her lips, wettened a little by her tongue, seemed to whisper to him.

“I want to feel you, again. All of you.” His voice was thick with something pure and natural, untampered by society’s shears. He felt a stirring in himself. He tried to quell it, but it only seemed to grow. The intensity almost overwhelmed him. “I want to hear the sounds that you have no control over.” He swallowed. “I want… I want to kiss you.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

The pit of Victoria’s stomach twisted, and her chest hollowed out as she gasped for air that seemed to entirely escape her. She closed her eyes for a moment, and felt the sweat collecting on the back of her neck. He had not laid a single hand on her; but the touch of his words alone was enough to make her feel like she was on fire.

“It would not be fair… Lord M… to allow Ernest his love whilst denying ours.”

“No. It would not. But we would need to make him aware of our… intentions… if the Prince were to discover us…”

“Agreed.”

“Do you think he will help us?”

“I think he will understand. Longing… is clearly no stranger to him.”

Lord Melbourne chuckled,

“Well. I do not believe it is a stranger to anyone.”

That was quite true. It was a fact – immaculate – that not a single member of the royal household had a heart that belonged to themselves. It was also quite true that no one’s heart belonged to their spouse anymore.


	14. Time Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strange occurrence.

The Duchess put it down to a change in the weather – rather than a change in the heart – that led her to abandon her odd chores of wifely idleness, and to go out riding on a Sunday morning, after the church service, knowing that her husband would not be attentive today. There was a fresh sunshine, but a soft breeze which blew away the tedium of the exercise, and made her feel quite alive – livelier than she had felt in a good few years – as she cantered across St James’ Park.

All who passed her would have said she was the prettiest young thing London had to offer, but would have cast suspicious eyes over the absence of her husband. The whereabouts of this young and, by all opinions, handsome Duke was a mystery, but the young wife seemed careless of this fact, and smiled at the very sunshine.

Prince Albert – who, himself, had taken to riding more and more since growing apart from his wife and Queen – happened to be trotting across St James’ Park at the same time as the Duchess on this particular Sunday morning in the sunshine, and he saw her from a good way off and, as soon as he could be heard, he called,

“Good morning, Duchess!”

The young woman took a few moments to recognise the man, but eventually smiled to see the Prince.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Please, you can call me Albert,” the man called, amiably. He seemed refreshed by the company of another on his ride – and his face coloured. In exercise, the Duchess assumed.

“Good morning, Albert.” These words were spoken with giggles on the part of the Duchess, who turned quite pink. Albert was rather charmed by this bashfulness, and he began to laugh too. He steadied his restless horse,

“Is my brother not riding with you?”

“No. I am sure he has far more important matters to attend to.”

“Nonsense. I, myself, feel that a brisk ride in the open air is the most important matter there is.”

“I could not agree with you more, Albert,” she laughed, turning her head up to the broad daylight where it was most thick and permeating, and her very skin seemed to soak up the yellow sun and glow with the force of it. And, when she smiled, it seemed that all of summer had come to light.

“Perhaps, then, I could accompany you on the rest of your ride.”

“Oh, well, you would simply come back the way you came!” she protested, shaking her head.

“It is no bother,” Albert insisted, “I find that, often, by retracing one’s steps, you can begin to notice the more delicate sights… that, before, were completely overlooked.” There was a strange providence to his words that made the Duchess wilt. But she smiled nonetheless, and spurred her horse into a soft walk, as Albert turned his horse around and walked alongside her.

“You seem to have an appreciation for nature,” remarked the Duchess once they had set off, noticing the fond glances he seemed to bestow on every leaf and trembling blade of grass.

“I feel akin to it.”

“All of nature?” inquired the Duchess, pulling at the reins of her steed to keep it from walking off too fast. She turned her head briefly to look at Albert.

“You sound surprised.”

The Duchess cocked her head.

“If you declare yourself akin to all nature: then you call yourself one with the storm, as well as the calm woodland.”

“I think that everyone can feel a storm within them.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. All the time. Whether it lays dormant, or far below the skin, or if it rises and cracks through the surface. I think there is a current pulsing inside us in every moment.”

“Do other people sometimes excite these storms?” she asked, in all innocence. Albert nodded,

“I think, perhaps, they do.”

“For better or worse.”

Albert nodded again at this, and noticed how the breeze of the ride picked up the thin, bright hairs around the sides of the Duchess’ face, and made curls of them across her cheeks and around her neck. A storm: what a wonderful way of putting into words the skipping of his heart when his eyes met with this beautiful, intelligent young woman.

“Does the Queen not ride with you?”

“She used to,” Albert remarked, without bitterness. The Duchess replied in a tone so soft and kind that it seemed she had taken a damp cloth and stooped to wipe away any unpleasantness in the Prince’s mind,

“It is very foolish of her to have stopped.”

Albert cleared his throat,

“We used to race one another!” he chuckled.

“Is that so?”

“Some days, yes.”

“And were you a good enough horseman to keep up with her?”

“I believe I put up a decent fight.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“What?”

“You seem unsure.”

“Well, I suppose there is only one way that I can evidence your assertions, Albert,” she said, slyly, digging her spurs into the rump of her horse, and beginning to laugh as the walk turned into a gallop, and she shot off in front of the Prince.

Albert was not far behind, however, and – as soon as he had realised the competition – he thundered into action, and raced her along the paths of the park, feeling the speed whip his hair and knock the air from his lungs.

Meanwhile, in Buckingham Palace, Victoria had asked to see her cousin, Ernest. The hour was a little early for a meeting such as this, but Victoria had realised that catching her cousin alone would be very difficult, so she seized the opportunity as soon as it had become apparent.

“You asked to see me, cousin Victoria,” Ernest said, sauntering into the room with that self-satisfied air that Victoria was so accustomed to that she found it charming rather than infuriating – as it so easily could have been. He threw himself on to the sofa opposite the Queen, and leant back, resting his head on the gilded swirls that made up the back of the plush seat, and he stared at her through eyes narrowed by the angle of his head. His eyes were very dark, any very handsome, but hid a world of secrets.

Victoria did not feel frightened. Fright had long abandoned her. For love was a far brighter feeling than fear – and shed light into the corners of her being, and breathed life into things that had lain dormant. There was no fear when the image of her Lord M was in her mind, and the touch of his hands in her memory, and the sound of his voice whispering to her in every moment. How could she be afraid, when she knew that he stood behind her at every moment? No, she was not afraid at all. Because, though she could feel herself walking into a wilderness, she knew that if she were to stay on the borders of the forest she would be further from her love than she could bear.

“Ernest,” Victoria said, an air of business about her, “I need to talk to you about the deal we made.”

Ernest sighed as the foreboding of something unpleasant began to run bitterly into Ernest’s veins. He crossed his hands across his chest as he implored,

“Victoria…” 

His words were meant to stop her, but she was not for stopping.

“I need to talk to you specifically about… about breaking it,” he said, steeling herself with a shaking breath drawn in through her nostrils. Ernest’s dark eyes flickered for a moment. Then he leant forward, drawing his face down, and there was something like anger on his face. Restrained behind glass. It was as visible to her as anything, but she did not feel threatened by it. She was the Queen after all. Not even his words could wound her.

“You want me to stand by and watch as you have an affair? Deceiving my brother?”

Victoria smiled, enchantingly, and replied,

“No, Ernest, I want you to help us to do it.”

Anger. Shock. Refusal.

“That is cruel. And it is inappropriate of you to ask.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. Her blue eyes taunted.

“It is inappropriate of you to cuckold the Duke of Sutherland. And to ignore your wife. You are quite the hypocrite,” her voice seemed to dance on the air, skipping from highs to lows and each pitch as teasing as the last. When Ernest spoke, his pitch was singular and deep,

“This was not part of the plan, Victoria. This was not the deal.”

“Deals change. You said you would not have your heart’s love in body. And, yet, you have. Circumstances have changed.”

“Pardon?”

“The Duchess of Sutherland.” Ernest’s throat clenched. “You have been… engaging… with her, have you not?”

“How…?” His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. He could not hear it over the sound of his own heart thundering. “Who told you?”

“That is no matter. Am I correct?”

Ernest was never one for fighting, particularly. He exercised his passions elsewhere, of course. As a child, when Albert had kicked up a fuss, he had sighed and given in soon enough. It was a habit he had never grown out of but – if anything – grown in to. Ernest was of too careless a disposition to keep up an inconvenient façade when the holes were already gaping and the sound of the wind passing through was already whistling.

“You are,” he said, rather timidly.

“Yes, well. I believe that means the deal has now changed.”

He was tapping at his leg, now, agitated. But Victoria was entirely serene, dressed in her muslin, sat in the light, unmoving. Her voice was steady and composed. And William Lamb was in her mind’s eye.

“So, what? You want me to keep Albert unawares?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you expect me to do that?”

“You are his brother.”

“You are his wife.”

“Am I?” Victoria asked. This sounded like a genuine question. She tilted her head. “Are you married to Miss Wood? Are you really?”

No. Of course he wasn’t.

“You are clever, Victoria.”

“You sound surprised. You forget that I am Queen. Talking is my job.” Ernest scoffed. “And I pride myself in being very good at it.” Ernest turned two tired eyes towards her. This was dangerous. This was the scattering of his body into the coarse wilderness. This was to stand on the peak of a moor at the mercy of a storm. This was the eye of some storm that he was blind to. “So we will allow a physical relationship to occur between the Duchess of Sutherland and yourself… and, in return, you will help Lord Melbourne and I do the same.”

“This is madness, Victoria.”

“Oh, I know,” she smirked, “But love is a sort of merry madness. Don’t you agree?”

If love was a merry madness, Albert was sick. And, with sickness, came the hatching of an idea that – at first – seemed insane. Perhaps there was something in the air which had bred insanity in the palace, for Albert had decided to act. His assumptions were flimsy. His execution would be shabby. But he was resolved.

Victoria entered the drawing room in the late morning, only a few days after reaching her agreement with Ernest, and found Albert stood at the window. She paid little attention to him, walked into the room, picked up her lace shawl from the seat, and was about to leave when Albert stopped her with a short speech that was so firm and decided that it must have been studied in great detail and at great length. It felt stunted – but its power shocked her.

“You are having an affair with Lord Melbourne. Aren’t you, Victoria?”

Those were the words. Pronounced fully and correctly. Not harsh. Hardly a syllable of judgement laced his lips. But the air became heavy with the words. He was so oddly calm that Victoria could not feel frightened that her heart’s intent had been cut and was bleeding out into the open. She blinked at him for a few moments, in frozen guilt.

“Albert… I…”

“You see, Victoria, I have found myself in a rather… interesting situation. Fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your answer.” He stayed at the window. He was bathed in a sort of wistful light that made his face look soft. She wondered whether – if he were positioned in another area of the room – the anger would become apparent to her.

“How do you mean, Albert?”

“You see, if you are having an affair with Lord Melbourne, then it would be rather good for me.”

Victoria almost laughed, but her throat was too tight to let any sound escape.

“Good? Albert, are you well?”

Albert turned from the window, and the light made a silhouette of him, so his face became blurs and shadows. But she could have sworn he was _smiling_.

“I am in love. With another woman.”

Victoria could not help but grin at this: the sheer absurdity of it, but she sheer joy that came from this news. Not just selfishness – the fact that it allowed her freedom to love elsewhere – but also a joy that came from knowing Albert could find happiness elsewhere, too.

“Another woman? Pray tell, who?” she cried, advancing on him and taking both of his hands in hers, turning him around so that she could see his face in the light of the window again. He was smiling, indeed.

“She is married. But her husband is inattentive.”

Those were the words. And it hardly took a second for Victoria’s mind to do backflips and land on the information that made her dizzy.

“No!” Victoria cried, her hand flying to her mouth and her eyes growing wide and round like shining dinner plates.

“What?”

“Not the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg?” she cried, her face splitting with a wide and ridiculous grin. Albert remained puzzled,

“Why do you say so?”

“Does she love you in return?” Victoria cried, ignoring him. Albert grew bashful at this, but replied as modestly as he could,

“I have reason to believe so.”

“Oh! How absurd this all is! Two marriages, six individuals, three love affairs!” She was being carried off on a wave of romanticism: rose petals and sweet airs and girlish fantasies that delighted her still.

“Who is the sixth?”

“The Duchess of Sutherland!”

“With Ernest?”

“Yes!”

“Oh.”

“This is like something from an improbable fiction,” Albert thought aloud, beginning to chuckle, pacing away from the window, reeling.

“You must have her, Albert! Then not a single person will go unhappy or unloved! This is perfect!”

“Victoria, do not be hasty! I have not asked the Duchess yet!”

“Oh, she will say yes, of course she will! She is of such a delicate and intelligent nature! She is far better for you than I ever could have been!” Her words were kind and bright and lively. She sounded like an eighteen-year-old girl again, only just Queen, drunk on power but high on a sense of goodness and just intent. She was romantic and flighty and fresh and untainted and raw. She was a woman laid out at her very best. Unafraid.

“We were always far better being cousins, I think, Victoria.”

Victoria laughed, taking Albert’s hand for the first time in many weeks, and pressing it with genuine affection: an expression she had not shown to him in so long.

“The country need be none the wiser! To all seeing eyes, there are some very profitable marriages. But behind closed doors… oh! It is like something from Shakespeare!”

“Chaucer, more like,” Albert smiled. Something this ridiculous could not have come from Shakespeare, but from the bawdy poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, where sense seems to have no merit at all. Victoria glared at him. Always correcting her. Always showing off his secret knowledge that she could never have. Albert raised his eyebrows – with the sort of shock that becomes one when they realise they are treading on hot coals. But then a smile broke out, and eased his burning toes. She was teasing him, again. She was very good at that. He would miss that the most. “Oh, Victoria.”

“We can be friends, then?” Victoria smiled, remembering how they had spent fond days together in the pretty springtime of their honeymoon days, fresh and free. She had never loved Albert – and for a time she had hated him – but to have him as a friend and a cousin would be wonderful.

“Of course.”

Then all that was standing in the way of this marvellous plan of theirs was the consent of the young Duchess – or Miss Wood, as she should really be known, for she was still unengaged in her heart. So, when the young Prince approached her, bashful and nervous, stuttering over his words, but trying his hardest to explain a ridiculous situation to her in words intelligent enough to do her justice, she was quite delighted. He could have laughed at himself, that he had somehow managed to make himself part of a situation such as this. But the Duchess took to this strange situation like a friend, for the ins and outs were explained to her in a voice which made her heart flutter, and by a pair of lips that made her flush pink. Prince Albert was exactly the kind of man she liked. No. Not liked. Loved, perhaps. Though the word ‘love’ felt a little silly to her. Albert would teach it to her. He had always enjoyed being a teacher.

“Oh, Blanche.”

Harriet, too, was informed of the situation by her love, the other brother, who had been informed by the younger, and she laughed excessively through the headache that the mass of information had formed.

Emma was informed, too, by William, who had been informed of the most recent developments by Victoria.

“Oh, good lord!” she cried, “I feel quite jealous that I have the common sense to be faithful to my husband.” She tilted her head and smiled at him.

“It is insanity,” William replied, “But I am as insane as the rest.”

And insane he was. For he was kissing Victoria in Buckingham Palace – knowing that not a single person who could interrupt them would think ill of how his lips scoured hers, how his hands took her face gently, and how her body pressed into his. Emma, Albert, Harriet, Ernest, Blanche, any of them: they’d smile to see him show his adoration for the Queen of England. For, adore her, he did! And he was no longer ashamed. He no longer had to hide it. He was open and loving and adoring of all of her. He kissed her, and his head was spinning. But she grounded him, entirely. Her lips were an anchor in the wilderness. Her hands on his back were a part of him. Her kiss was heaven. It was all he needed; all he wanted.

“Come, Victoria!” A shriek and a burning red blush tore the two lovers apart and they turned like startled creatures to see Ernest entering the room, and throwing a slip of paper down on to the table, “This is no place for such a reunion. Paris would be far more appropriate!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this all a bit silly? Yes. But I'm enjoying it - so I hope you can too! Please do let me know your thoughts if you get the time!


	15. Timeless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Until the end.

The very idea of it was ludicrous – so any unaffected observer would not have noticed the small glances exchanged between the Queen and her ex-Prime Minister, nor the little smile shared between the Prince and the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, nor the laughter shared between her husband and the Duchess of Sutherland. Who could possibly have imagined the tangle of souls that lay beneath the orderly marriages? To the casual onlooker, the marriages were good and efficient and the trip to Paris was one of monarchical duty, not a lovers’ trip.

"Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour,” Victoria read aloud.

“Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss,” Melbourne replied, in translation.

They turned their faces up, in unison, to view the statue that bore the name. Two marble figures: a great, winged man, and a woman. The supple flesh of marble about her breast was being hammocked by the cupid’s white hand, and her two arms rose in a soft circular embrace to take her saviours head. And he, with lips of cold stone, seemed to warm as he descended without movement to her mouth to give his great kiss, lifting her weakened body which fell, shrouded in smocks and scarves that draped effortlessly from curve to curve. The form was mesmerising. Rising in two great spikes of bird-like wings, but then falling in drapes. It looked as if one could reach out and touch the skin of these figures and it would feel downy as a person’s skin does.

Victoria’s stomach tightened as she saw their moment of passion, and the twisting turned into a pulsing as she turned to look at Lord M, who was a little flushed.

This was the Louvre and, though Victoria had never been one for the arts as such, she was convinced by Albert that it was the place to go. And Blanche had confessed an interest in the French masters. And Lord Melbourne liked a good painting here and there, and so everyone was bustled along through the gallery. Victoria had moved with the rest of them, but had stopped to observe this sculpture. Observe was not a word for it. She marvelled. Perhaps that was better. For what word can give justice to observing an artist’s work that feels akin to one’s very heart? When the shape of the marble seems to mirror one’s very own being? When something unliving would seem to possess the same heartbeat and same brain as one’s own?

“I feel as if I am that woman, there,” she muttered, keeping her voice down, but gesturing towards the figure of a woman cut in alabaster, leaning up in desperation towards the kiss that would revive her. “I was lost and vulnerable, and then you came down like a winged angel from heaven to save my life.” Her voice was so low that Lord Melbourne strained to hear it, but each syllable he was able to detect was music to his ears. Music that he quickly banished with a shake of his head and a quiet protestation of his own,

“I think you romanticise me too much, Ma’am.” Victoria was about to object; she turned and opened her mouth and drew a sharp breath but then William continued, gently, “If anything, you were the one to save me.” With that, he turned his eyes to her and set her alight. Her burning was imperceptible, contained within a finite space that dimensioned her, flaming beneath the paper of her skin and illuminating the curves of her face which flickered – as a flame does – with her emotion, before settling in a teary look at the face her love had become. Victoria uttered a stifled laugh: half of her disbelieving, but the other half of her knowing. Knowing that Lord Melbourne had once had his heart broken, and knowing that the heart of his she now held in her hands and her bosom was full and repaired. His eyes were teary, too, and neither could see the statue when they returned to gaze at it. Their eyes were too blurred with bleary tears. And even if they had the capability of sight to see it – they could never see it the same way. For now, they would each see their own face in the figure laid out bare on the stone, and would see the other’s face in their saviour.

“How do you find Paris, Duchess?” Albert asked the dark-haired woman which had now become his lover and, more importantly, his brain’s companion. Blanche was more than happy to discuss the art with him, and she did so with such sensitive perception that Albert felt challenged by her, enlivened by her, excited by her. This was a relationship like he had never dreamt. And now she was tearing her eyes away from a portrait to reply to the Prince.

“Very… enlightening, sir,” she grinned, tracing feather-light fingers down the arm of his coat. Albert could feel the soft fingertips tensing on his arm, and then letting go, and flying away as if they had never been at all. He pressed his blush from his cheeks and turned politely to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland and Ernest. The Duchess and Ernest were – of course – walking very closely together, and the Duke of Sutherland was side-lined somewhat.

“And how are you finding that artworks?” Albert asked the small group that had formed.

“They lack some of the finesse of life, I feel, brother,” Ernest replied, lending a flirtatious look to the subject of his affections – the purest and prettiest life he could imagine.

“I think they mirror life quite beautifully, sir,” Harriet replied, a little harshly, but teasingly. The Duke of Sutherland was about to reply, when the group were interrupted by a mature, but handsome, French woman. Dressed smartly but simply, with all the manners of character that struck the Englishmen and women of the group as remarkably English, but all of the quirks of the face that made her undeniably French, she was an art expert. The Duke of Sutherland had never met a woman who claimed to be an expert in art before. Perhaps the French did things a little differently, he assumed. But she seemed very agreeable. And she was certainly an attractive thing. And she talked of art to a degree of great intelligence. And she talked to such length about the works that Albert, Ernest, Harriet, and Blanche all grew bored and walked away, following the Queen and Lord Melbourne, and the Duke of Sutherland was left behind with this young woman – Amelie, being her name – and listened in fascinated silence all the while as she told him of the varying tones, the tenuity of brushstrokes, and the work of the great masters.

When they had caught up with the Queen and Lord Melbourne, they found them laughing. They could laugh so easily together. That was remarked upon by all. Though their passion was strong, though their conversation was animated, though their looks were loving: nothing was quite so strong between them as the capability for laughter, when the times are good, and the season allows it.

They had been prevented from laughter for so long. But to laugh again. To laugh again!

What he had said, or she had observed, was unclear, but they were laughing and smiling together for hours, as they took to the gardens, and spent the rest of a dreamy day in the foreign sunshine.

“And what do you think of Paris, Lord Melbourne?” Victoria asked, kicking her feet playfully into the gravel, and rolling the term ‘Lord Melbourne’ around on her tongue, enjoying the strange sound of it now that she had moaned the name William into the thick air and the silence of the night. He chuckled at it, as his ears had been the sole hearers of those moans, which had trembled into his skin. With his chuckle came a shrug as she turned the corner of a bush and observed the flowers.

“It is beautiful,” he sighed, reaching down and running the petals of the flower over in the palm of his hand, “But I miss home.”

“Brocket Hall?” she asked, tipping her head to the side, and grinning. Melbourne shook his head.

“Buckingham Palace,” he replied. Victoria furrowed her brows. Brocket Hall had always been where he felt he belonged. He had grown up there, lived there, become a young man within those walls, relaxed there and loved there, and he would retire there, and die when his time came in the slumberous cocoon of Brocket Hall. But Melbourne’s head insisted on shaking, and he explained, seeing her confusion, “Your place is Buckingham Palace. And, therefore, it will always be mine.”

If they were not in danger of being discovered, she would have kissed him, now. She would have pushed him to the ground and kissed him until he could no longer draw breath. But she could not do so, now. So, she told herself that she would do exactly that. Later.

It had become clear that when two people are told to part, they grow closer, and the bond between them is more unbreakable than it ever could have been before. No one could know, of course, how long this strange affair could last. They could be discovered before the end of the week – and ripped apart as quickly as they had come together. But that did not seem to matter for them. They were living on borrowed time: but the life was magnificent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it! I must say that I, too, did not quite expect this story to go in the direction it did - but I am quite happy with it even in its absurdity. And thank you very, very much for going on this adventure with me. Thank you for supporting, and for all of you who have left comments.
> 
> I am sure that I cannot stay away from this ship for long, so more soon. Please do send me a prompt if there is something you want to see.

**Author's Note:**

> New multi-chapter fic! I know the vicbourne fandom doesn't need angst right now - but this story does have an element of hope to it. As always, I hope you have enjoyed - and please do let me know your thoughts in the comments!


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